[jfb]

How do you make money as a message bus? I'm not saying I disagree (I take no position on the merits of Twitter-as-a-servce, as I am not a user), but clearly the Best Minds have decided that the attention economy (read: ads) is the way forward. How do you pay for that critical mass? Twitter isn't something that falls out of infrastructure -- decisions had and have to be taken to spend resources.

While selling people to advertisers is getting harder, and therefore less margin-friendly, it'd take a braver company than Twitter to turn their back on the model. IMO.

[softbuilder]

It's not entirely either/or. They have a website and an official app, so advertising is always going to be on the table.

You make money by charging companies for access to the platform. Charge for access, charge for users, charge per tweet. There are options. This is not a new idea. (See EDI etc.)