* Integration of memberships like Patreon - Twitter can essentially kill Patreon by building Patreon with better discovery and a non-4GB-memory-eating SPA.
* YouTube Premium, Discord Nitro-like premium memberships with extra features
* Awards like Reddit gold
* Reduce costs by laying off employees
* Focus on core investments and get rid of non-revenue generating projects
Advertising shouldn't be the only business model you embrace.
> * Reduce costs by laying off employees
> * Focus on core investments and get rid of non-revenue generating projects
How do those help your revenue?
> Advertising shouldn't be the only business model you embrace.
A fine point, but those last two ideas aren't business models. A business model needs to include money coming into the business. Stopping money from leaving is a different thing.
Twitter's problem is that the design and product team's egos wouldn't like the fact the main thing people would pay for is being able to opt out of their "improvements" to the service.
£4.99 a month for full API access for third party clients, plus two anonymously nominated other accounts (privacy protecting your alts). Total chronological order. Clients can opt out of all "conversation" UI improvements. Favourites can be turned back to stars. Users can pick the client that's best for them layout wise. A proper, useful search tool. A website with more that two tweets on screen on a 4K monitor. No algorithmic features whatsoever.
It would sell like gangbusters. It might also suggest to shareholders that their biggest problem was Twitter's employees.
Twitter is the last company I would trust to deliver a product that's not a 4GB-memory-eating SPA. Their current web UI is a disaster in that regard.
So no, there's very very few ways to hit the sorts of revenue targets Twitter has without advertising.
That is very different from saying that a Twitter-like service can't be profitable without advertising.
Another route could be to start a newsletter platform since paid newsletters are getting so big.
A bit of focus on exclusives.. pay for them, vet the story and the person reporting, journalists would fall over themselves to subscribe to that.
Or maybe I read too much bbc
Charge per tweet for anyone with >1000 followers. Those people will gladly pay, they are addicted to the thrill of likes and retweets.
If Twitter can't make enough money to survive while respecting their users' privacy choices, maybe that's the market telling Twitter that it shouldn't exist. You know, invisible hand and all.