I won't pretend to know how they should have monetized, that's what @jack is compensated richly to figure out. My point is that the chance to be the messaging backbone of the Internet was more valuable and a better use of Twitter's resources (human and financial capital) than the certainty of being defeated by Facebook.

If it's not your job to figure out the how, why should anyone care about your opinion of the what?

Edit: which is my slightly harsh way of saying dreams are easy, but doing is what counts.

Separating the what from the how is the definition of delegation. Happens billions of times every day all over the world, to mostly good effect.

> and made money at the same time

The ecosystem would be a loss leader, simply for the purpose of having lots of market share.

They would make money on their main product.

Same as how google runs all sorts of services without making money on them, simply for the purpose of expanding online usage.

It's basically a variant of the Freemium model.

Perhaps an App Store style system for all that third party development?