GPS is out there for anybody to use for free. It's incredibly useful and the value to the economy of having that there as a utility anybody can use is huge.

Perhaps Twitter as a utility could be just as valuable. Maybe it doesn't need to be monetized.

Sure, just convince the US military to use Twitter to drop bombs on people.

They already use IRC for that, so maybe they could at least support it more...

But GPS is broadcast, and Twitter is ultimately packed-switched. I.e. the "GPS providers" don't have to pay more money just because there are more users - the satellite signals are already in the air, free and open for use by anyone who knows how.

That really doesn't matter. It only makes the per-user cost more difficult to figure out.

FWIW, I believe GPS costs the US on the order of $1 per user per month.

Let me put it in other words: the marginal cost of a GPS user is exactly $0 to the service provider; it's not the case with Twitter.

I understand that.

Charge people who build applications that use it in any significant way beyond sending text messages through the Twitter approved interface.

Would the pricing be per app, or per user?

If you charge per user, it's unaffordable for small developers (unless they push the cost on to their users).

If you charge per app, you won't make enough money for it to be worthwhile.

I'd charge per user, because as you said... small developers can push the cost onto their users.

It would let the apps on top figure that out and they take a rev share

Twilio has managed to find a way