Techdirt. Stories filed under "pay" Easily digestible tech
news... en-us Techdirt. Stories filed under "pay" Tue, 24 Jul
2012 19:51:06 PDT Apparently A Debate: Would Twitter Benefit If
Users Had To Pay To Use It? Timothy Geigner Twitter would
actually benefit as a service if users had to pay to use it.
I'll admit to being a little bit surprised when I saw this, but
digging into the details brought what I think is a wonderful
conclusion as to why the answer is definitively "no".  This all
more or less started (or at least really took off) when Dalton
Caldwell, who founded Imeem, announced he wanted to create a
for-pay service similar to Twitter. Caldwell states that
services like Twitter don't realize their full potential in what
he deems an "advertising-supported monoculture". "All of these
services are essentially in the same business: vying for the
opportunity to sell you/your clickstream to advertisers. … I
have no interest in completely opting out of the social Web. But
please, I want a real alternative t