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A comment on Twitter Is Expected to Field Bids This Week. Parent comment

Re:Twitter Is Expected to Field Bids This Week by criddell on Wednesday October 05, 2016 @01:59PM (#12646180)
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.

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Re:Twitter Is Expected to Field Bids This Week by icebraining on Wednesday October 05, 2016 @02:28PM (#12646456)
Sure, just convince the US military to use Twitter to drop bombs on people.
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Re:Twitter Is Expected to Field Bids This Week by TeMPOraL on Wednesday October 05, 2016 @10:30PM (#12649771)
They already use IRC for that, so maybe they could at least support it more...
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Re:Twitter Is Expected to Field Bids This Week by TeMPOraL on Wednesday October 05, 2016 @10:29PM (#12649769)
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.
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Re:Twitter Is Expected to Field Bids This Week by criddell on Thursday October 06, 2016 @12:48PM (#12653937)
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.

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Re:Twitter Is Expected to Field Bids This Week by TeMPOraL on Thursday October 06, 2016 @12:51PM (#12653968)
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.
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Re:Twitter Is Expected to Field Bids This Week by criddell on Thursday October 06, 2016 @01:26PM (#12654295)
I understand that.
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