I think Twitter's business model should be to charge users based on the number of followers they have. Give them a free threshold of say 10K followers, and then charge them a fee after that. Users clearly benefit, and often profit, from their large follower base. Twitter should profit from it too.
>Give them a free threshold of say 10K followers, and then charge them a fee after that. Users clearly benefit, and often profit, from their large follower base. Twitter should profit from it too.
Interesting idea, in theory. In reality, the "thought leaders" will simply move to another platform that is "free". Is Twitter markedly different than Facebook/G+/Instagram/Snapchat/email?
The 'thought leaders' are the product. They're the reason new people sign up. It would probably be better to implement something like twitch where you can 'subscribe' to someone with lots of followers for a small fee that twitter can take their cut of.
Or the inverse -- the Patreon model. Twitter already had the hard stuff down (network effect, verified users). Add some content distribution model and bingo, paid followers.
