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Comment by RexRollman | Hacker News Reader

I'm surprised that they have never offered a paid, pro version of Twitter. Even features as simple as no-ads and access to their complete timeline history would be enough to entice some people.

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They can't do that. Then you'd have revenue to base valuations on.

Revenue is a big no-no in silicon valley, it punctures the reality distortion bubble.

You bring up an excellent point about the difference between bootstrapping and being funded. When you are on your own, profits are good, period. But if you have to show people numbers, small numbers are bad and it might be more "strategic" of you to show them other numbers (like usercount) that are big instead.

The dual ad-based and paid ad-free model doesn't work. The existence of an ad-free version devalues the ad-based model. The most attractive customers will pay for the ad-free version so advertisers won't pay you as much. And you can't pay Twitter's bills on the 0.1% of users who'll pay $5 a month. Ad-based is the only viable solution. They'll lose a tiny minority of ad-hating zealots and profit meanwhile.

> And you can't pay Twitter's bills on the 0.1% of users who'll pay $5 a month.

I wonder do their bills exceed $5 million a month. (I know, you pulled numbers from nowhere. I'm only making the point that they have an absolutely enormous userbase[0].)

[0]http://thenextweb.com/twitter/2011/09/08/twitter-100m-users-...

$500k a month: 0.1% of 100 million is 100k, not 1 million.

Whoops. Sorry, I haven't slept in 34 hours.

Or just one that simply works.

Business idea for twitter: paid access to the old, non ajaxified interface.

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