Twitter Has a New CEO; What About a New Business Model?

The apparent limitation of the ad-supported media business model is that there will never be enough traffic to satisfy the beast. But while subscription revenue is stickier and gives creators more runway and short-term security, eventually the flame that started any new project will be extinguished. A new muse will need to be found.

If Twitter had a full-time CEO, he or she would have come to this conclusion in half the time. Twitter doesn’t have the scale to compete on an ad model, and their ad tools are substandard. However, they are unwittingly starching their hat blue and could acquire several of the remaining independent media properties (Lee, McClatchy, Condé Nast, Hears... See more

The affluent, early-adopter users who are mostly likely to pay $ᵤ are also those users with highest $ₐ, as advertising to them commands a premium. Unless you enforced discriminatory subscription pricing to users, based on the counterfactual of their potential ad revenue, you’d still be better off advertising to the people willing to drop $10/month ... See more