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"Note I said "or" there. Decentralizing the infrastructure would make things cheaper and might give you revenue opportunity (and growth) that you wouldn't have

"Note I said "or" there. Decentralizing the infrastructure would make things cheaper and might give you revenue opportunity (and growth) that you wouldn't have otherwise. For example, perhaps you get into the business of aggregating ad sales to downstream providers." Well, maybe, but you can't save your way to $2b in revenue. Stock prices don't generally go up on cost savings, they go up because of future revenue AND profit expectations. Silicon Valley and Wall Street both prize growth in revenue way over profit. But you're correct that they might discover another revenue stream - but now you're betting a lot on the value of federation. "Make a payment to the address, then start querying at 50MB/sec for the duration of your valid token (in this example, 2 hours):" I think you are vastly overstating the number of people or companies that would be willing to pay for this firehose. While it may be useful to some companies, overall the data isn't likely to be enough to be a $1b opportunity. More importantly, the number of people willing to buy isn't likely to grow - so a B2B play can be a minor part of their revenue but I don't believe they'd be able to depend on it for massive growth. "And yes, I'm proposing Twitter should use Bitcoin to monetize query traffic. Even better, charge people for posting lots of statuses, or following and unfollowing lots of people. Link ask price to signal/noise ratio." Given the current cost structure of other services (Facebook/Instagram/SnapChat), I'd argue you're unlikely to get anyone to pay for it, and you're reducing both the size and any potential growth of your audience dramatically.

kordless 11y ago
> Data licensing and other revenue totaled $48 million, an increase of 95% year-over-year. This is from their Q1 2015 report, so data licensing and other revenue is probably $200M ARR now. Clearly people are willing to pay for access. If they improve the way they provide that, it just might be bigger than a $1B opp. I would be willing to pay for on demand abilities to control who I follow and unfollow without being throttled.
- inthewoods 11y ago
  That's approximately 10% of total revenue. I also think you have the growth incorrect - in their 10Q, Twitter said the product was growing 65% YoY. So you're making two assumptions: - That the opportunity is there - and that the growth will continue. This isn't a given, but it is possible. I think the fact that Twitter is obviously investing more in the advertising business tells us what we need to know about the data business - that it is good, growing, but will always remain a relatively small portion of their overall revenue mix. Now you may argue that that is because they're blocking it - but my assumption is that they are investing based on Total Addressable Market (TAM) and experience. - That the problem is the payment system. There's little to support this - there's little sign of demand or willingness from individuals or small companies to spend on this at scale. The fact that you're willing to pay for on demand controls is great and fine, but it does not mean that anyone else is willing in the same way.

kordless 11y ago

> Data licensing and other revenue totaled $48 million, an increase of 95% year-over-year. This is from their Q1 2015 report, so data licensing and other revenue is probably $200M ARR now. Clearly people are willing to pay for access. If they improve the way they provide that, it just might be bigger than a $1B opp. I would be willing to pay for on demand abilities to control who I follow and unfollow without being throttled.

inthewoods 11y ago
That's approximately 10% of total revenue. I also think you have the growth incorrect - in their 10Q, Twitter said the product was growing 65% YoY. So you're making two assumptions: - That the opportunity is there - and that the growth will continue. This isn't a given, but it is possible. I think the fact that Twitter is obviously investing more in the advertising business tells us what we need to know about the data business - that it is good, growing, but will always remain a relatively small portion of their overall revenue mix. Now you may argue that that is because they're blocking it - but my assumption is that they are investing based on Total Addressable Market (TAM) and experience. - That the problem is the payment system. There's little to support this - there's little sign of demand or willingness from individuals or small companies to spend on this at scale. The fact that you're willing to pay for on demand controls is great and fine, but it does not mean that anyone else is willing in the same way.