TightWind is written by Kyle Baxter. Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

Shawn Blanc thinks Twitter can’t exist in its current form as a paid-for service:

My lengthier response is that it’s hard to imagine Twitter ever expected to grow as fast as it has or become large as it is now. And now, in a way, I think that because of its growth, Twitter as a service has proven on its own behalf that having a large and vast user base is more important to Twitter the company than having a small but profitable one.

The strength of Twitter is in its simplicity (anyone with an SMS-enabled phone can post an update) and its enormous user base. And I bet that the founders of Twitter see its strength not just in what it currently is (an enormous and active social network) but in what it has the potential to be (an even bigger network with a scope far beyond just social interaction).

That’s exactly right—Twitter’s value is that anyone with a cell phone or Internet connection can communicate with each other. Any hurdles to that, whether they’re technical or a paywall, dramatically reduce that value.

Ben Brooks responded to Shawn, and he thinks they have little choice but to charge:

I agree with that general notion — I truly do — but it is a heavily flawed view. The mail system is vital, yet it costs money to send a letter. The phone is crucial to the world, twice over, yet it costs money to place a phone call. The Internet is perhaps the most vital communication tool yet conceived by man, yet it costs money to gain access too. Power and water are also vital and, thus, we pay for them as well. Don’t forget that you must already pay to get on the Internet before you can even get to Twitter.

That’s certainly true—but the web is a very different place. There are two good reasons people are willing to pay for phone service—one, a phone is a radically more liberating communication service than any web communication service;1 and two, no one ever offered completely free, no-questions-asked phone service. We are comfortable with paying for phone service because that’s the way it’s always been, but that would change very quickly if a company came along and began offering completely free phone service.

Most people—and by “most,” I mean nearly all—will not pay for access to non-necessary software or services. Facebook wouldn’t exist today if they charged users, and neither would Twitter. As much as they enjoy using it, they can live just the same without it, and they will. Moreover, and just as important, free is the norm that’s developed on the web. Just as people assume they will have to pay for phone service, they now assume that web services will be free. Therefore, arguing that because other communication mechanisms—like the mail system or phone service—are, and always have been paid-for, doesn’t mean web communication services will work the same way. Perhaps they should be paid-for, but that’s a different question.

Ben argues that a paid-for Twitter, with a dramatically lower user-base, is still more useful than one that may disappear at any time. That’s true, but the dichotomy implicit in this argument—that the choice is between a free, unstable, uncertain service with a large user-base, and paid-by-users, dependable service with a small user-base—is a false one. That isn’t the choice.

While being directly paid for by end-users is the simplest revenue model, it isn’t the only one, and isn’t the correct one in every case. Twitter exists to be a mainstream communication platform for everyone, anywhere; and since requiring users to pay for the service would make that impossible, it simply isn’t the right revenue model.

There’s no shortage of possibilities for Twitter to explore. Here’s one. Twitter is becoming—if it isn’t already—a better source for breaking news than the news outlets themselves. In fact, the news outlets are using Twitter to find new information about breaking news events and to receive photos and video of the event much quicker than they were ever able to before.

Why not build a service for news outlets that recognizes some new event happening, then aggregates and culls tweets about it for relevant information, photos and video? Rather than try to drink from the fire hose, news outlets could pay for access to this service, which would pin point new events happening quicker than they can do it, supply them with details about what’s happening just as quickly, and provide them photos and video to report with. That’s a service, and I don’t think there’s any reason Twitter couldn’t provide it.

They could become invaluable to news outlets as a supplier of news detail. This is only one possible use of Twitter as it currently stands, and there’s all kinds of other similar uses that may be even more exciting and beneficial. These uses, though, simply can’t exist if Twitter is a paid-for service. Twitter should be embracing these unique characteristics of the system they’ve built. There’s no reason they can’t make decent money from it. But they have to think creatively.

1. The difference between going from having no phone at all to having a phone is much, much more meaningful than going from not having Facebook to having Facebook, for example. [↩]