The dumbest thing about this is that monetizing Twitter is trivial, without changing anything else. Just put occassional and obvious ads in our streams, and charge us to upgrade to see an ad-free steam.
It's hard to see $9 billion worth in these ideas, but that's only if we think in the short term.
Twitter could be genuinely worth that in 5 or 10 years, but only if it focussed on customers, and that's only going to happen if the founders vision trumps the very short term investor greed.
On the other hand, that is the status quo of the web (cf. AdBlock) and it mostly works.
I am also of the opinion that a vary cheap add blocking option say 1$/month would prevent most people from jumping though many hoops for add-block software.
I think the better argument is that most people don't know/care for ad-blocking software. I think AdBlock and its alternatives are prevalent in the tech community, but we're just a small part of total users.
I'd be willing wager that those 30 seconds of barrier would deter like 70-80% of the computer using population. Very few people as a whole know or are comfortable with browser extensions.
I recall Bonzi Buddy by name, but I know there were lots of others ... redirects for ecommerce affiliate fees and other obnoxious rent seeking.
I wonder if you could encourage the people who hate ads but would happily take a legitimate option by detecting ad blockers and instead of haranguing them for it, put up a polite advert for how to legitimise their ad free usage? (thinking in general, not just for twitter)
Regardless, as a developer it sucks to see companies take away fun tools, but as an entrepreneur I like seeing them at least try and execute an actual business plan.
Perhaps they can charge for certain items that can be considered premium, such as verified accounts. I still doubt there'll be a couple million of users willing to pay though.
But was the awesomeness before?