I agree with you. Twitter's route may not have been successful but "continue to give everything away for free and keep crossing our fingers" is not really a bet

I agree with you. Twitter's route may not have been successful but "continue to give everything away for free and keep crossing our fingers" is not really a better strategy. And I agree that there is no way an uncurated stream from nearly-anonymous sources like Twitter can replace relevant news hand-picked by experts (Bloomberg), though that stream could be used as part of the feed that the humans review. I think Twitter has two real value propositions: one, they are a great way for people with a following to broadcast messages. Two, they are a great way for people to engage with others whom they admire, because they seriously mitigate the problem of fan interaction for anyone with a following. People get Twitter accounts because they believe that when they tweet someone, that person sees it, and may respond to it. For example, @pmarca replied to a tweet I sent. You'll notice that both of these benefits center on broadcasters and not nobodies. Twitter got confused and thought the nobodies were the drivers of value, whereas it's really having broadcasters that nobodies a) want to hear from and b) want to have a hope in engaging with. Maybe there's an alternate universe where Twitter was offered as niche software to publicists at ungodly annual sums, and the general public was invited in to participate, witness, and grovel freely.