Good point. It's a bad example. In hindsight, what I was trying to get at in the third idea was slightly different to the other two. The first two are methods t

Good point. It's a bad example. In hindsight, what I was trying to get at in the third idea was slightly different to the other two. The first two are methods to capture some of the value they generate. But it's a risky proposition IMHO; when capturing value some of it will be destroyed (kind of like how taxation causes dead-weight loss). There's a possibility that the value proposition hits zero or goes negative, at which point Twitter is dead. The third, less risky, option would be to capture data in adjacent markets (probably via start-up acquisition). If they capture adjacent data that, when combined with existing holdings, the value they can offer to the 'money' side of their platform (e.g. advertisers, developers) increases more than linearly. At which point it's safer to 'tax' the money side of their market. Personally, I'd go for advertisers first: unlike developers, advertisers don't increase platform value for the other side of their market (users).