“There are two obvious ways forward. Charge the users, or charge those who want to get at the users … The second option might look puzzling, but it has worked before, in the MP3 market … Twitter could do the same: charge for access to its API, or throttle requests over a certain limit from non-paying sources.”

Charles Arthur puts forward this idea on The Guardian website. I disagree. He fails to factor in that the API is what made Twitter what it is today, and the volume of requests is what makes it so popular - it’s all about the “ambient conversation”. Charging for either of these would provoke a backlash from the community, who would see it as turning against those who got it where it is.

Posted Friday, June 6th, 2008 @ 12:12 am
Filed in business and productivity, science and tech

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