What Twitter and the NYT have in common

I understand why Winer says that "each is the solution to the other's problem" (referring to Twitter and the NYT). It is a reasonable assumption to come to, but I have to admit: I suspect its wrong. I don't think the primary reason why most "normal" people use Twitter is to share news links. I think Dave Winer uses it that way, but I feel like he has a tendency to assume that <i>his</i> way is the <i>only</i> way. It isn't.<p>I also understand Winer's objection to the 140-character limit. I really do. I personally think that it breaks Twitter for me and others who primarily access it via the web or the data connection on our smartphones.<p>However, I don't think Winer understands that for people who <i>don't</i> access Twitter in this way, anything more that 140 characters <i>completely breaks</i> the service. My wife used to have a "dumb" phone and thus access Twitter entirely through SMS. Had the service broken the 140-character limit, she would not have been able to use it.<p>I don't know how many people use Twitter in this manner. I don't know if anyone but Twitter does. I suspect, though, that Twitter doesn't change this because they <i>know</i> it will negatively impact enough of their userbase that it isn't worth dealing with.

Here is an idea for Twitter: they could open source their server infrastructure and make it distributed, thereby massively reducing their operating costs. Then they could offer paid hosting of Twitter streams for people who are too lazy to host their own Twitter servers (the Wordpress model).<p>One can dream, no? :-)

If what he's saying is right (and he very well could be) that's actually kind of bad for everyone. If The New York Times can't figure out how to make money then they will simply go out of business and we lose one of the more respected newspapers in the world.<p>I'm less concerned about Twitter but I can understand that it brings enough value to people's daily lives that not having it would be a net loss.<p>At least in the case of NYT, they're at least making an attempt to monetize their business in a reasonable way - you pay us money and we give you content.

Having some optional for-pay features seems like the no-brainer way for almost of these "give service away for free, get huge if popular" web businesses to get revenue. It should work for NYT, Facebook, Reddit, Twitter, etc. Essentially, freemium bolted on late. Even if not all users would be willing to buy anything, there will always be some folks that do. Find out what those folks want and are willing to pay, and make that happen. Done.