This popular opinion both overestimates how much consumers will pay for Internet services and underestimates how much advertising space is worth to advertisers.

This popular opinion both overestimates how much consumers will pay for Internet services and underestimates how much advertising space is worth to advertisers. One of the fundamental misunderstandings comes from the fact that one's usage of a site like Twitter is generally worth more to the ad-buying community than to the users themselves. This is why Facebook, arguably the strongest social platform, does not charge its users. Also, users create the content so charging them means you have less inventory to sell.