[xseven]

"The idea these days is, get a bunch of users and introduce ads."

That's exactly what Google and Facebook did.

All I can take from your comment is "if hypothetical scenario then my opinion is true"

[devishard]

Do you disagree with my hypothetical scenarios? That is, do you think if Google/Facebook introduced subscription fees nobody would subscribe?

Would you pay to read Twitter? Do you think that anyone would?

[nostrademons]

I disagree with it when put in the context of when the product launched.

I wouldn't have paid for Google in 2000 when I first discovered it; while it was better than all the other search engines out there, it wasn't better enough that I'd break my rule of never shelling out money to visit a website. I certainly wouldn't have paid money for Facebook; I was a poor college student when I got my FB account in 2004, and all you could do was poke people. I can poke people in real life without shelling out money for it.

I think many people confuse the value they get for a service now, after it has had a decade to refine its product and become deeply embedded in our lives, with the value they get from a service at launch, which is often virtually nothing.

[devishard]

That's a reasonable critique, and I think you're right. There exist products that start off without value people would pay for and slowly develop into something with value people would pay for, and Google is a good example.

I guess that leaves room for Twitter to develop into a product people would pay for, but I'm skeptical that can happen without very significant changes to their product, to the point that I'd be hesitant to call it the same product.