[vlehto]

The only reasonable way to monetize twitter is to find someone who is already making money out of it. Then get a slice of that pie. They still make a profit, so you aren't wiping out nodes.

I think there are two groups doing making some money. Advertisers and reporters/data analysts. The fist wants more visibility, the latter wants analyzing tools. How you separate businesses from power users? Beats me.

Going the "premium account with premium price" route may work good for a while. But you are practically scripting how your competitor could overtake you. All they have to do is give that premium content for free. This happened here in Finland. We had popular service called "irc-galleria" which was quite close to facebook. You needed premium account to befriend people. When facebook came, irc-galleria took about year to fall into obscurity.