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Comment by comex | Hacker News Reader

It's like peering. If you're that popular, Twitter is providing significant value to you, but you're also providing a lot of value to Twitter by being a reason for people to use the service (i.e. to read your tweets). Katy Perry needs Twitter a whole lot less than Twitter needs Katy Perry. Plus, not everyone popular on Twitter has a lot of money - a recent counterexample is Edward Snowden.

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Yeah but I'm sure Katy Perry gets enough out of the service to pay it $10k a year. For example.

Total revenue would be lower, yes, but that should be matched by cost-cutting. These companies' head-counts are bloated compared to the services they offer.

I know there's a lot more to Twitter than the simplistic short-messaging system it seems to be from the outside (speed, scaling, etc)...but does it really need over 4,000 people to run it? I highly doubt it.

This sounds like charging someone to bring you business. Katy Perry convinces a lot of people to use twitter and still has to pay to bring in revenue.

If this was the same for car sales, why would anyone recommend cars?

Yeah but that's a very risky move. If even 50% of the power users pay, then twitter still loses 50% of it's key content, which costs it users, which then means the remaining power users are less interested in paying and so on.

$10k a year to keep advertising not sanctioned by Katy Perry's management off her Twitter feed might get a bite or two....

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