If you're operating at that scale, I think "become a full-on advertising and ad tech company, platform, service, and network from top to bottom" seems like the only viable "step 3" (as with Google and Facebook).

I don't think just selling ads is sufficient; especially if it's not a service you can operate at a relatively low cost with a skeleton crew. I think it's probably either that or start charging for something. (Unless your goal isn't to ever make a profit, I suppose.)

Discord seemed to make it work (I think?) by combining an initial semi-skeleton crew approach with a freemium charging approach. They tried a few other things, but I think those efforts flopped.

Yeah by "sell ads" here I mean "do the whole data collection, targeting, whatever" deal that the platforms do.

Discord... definitely different. It's hard for me to believe that Nitro really can be paying for Discord but I guess it's possible?

[removed]

> Forbes estimated 1 million people are using Nitro as of 2020, and they made $130 million in revenue in 2020. If you assume that's all the $10/month Nitro (not the cheaper Nitro Classic), then 1 million users paying for Nitro would only account for a pretty small percentage of that. If the Nitro users estimate is accurate, not sure where the rest comes from.

1 million users * $10/month/user * 12 months/year = $120 million/year

That is close to the cited $130m annual revenue.

Yeah that's my bad, I mistakenly forgot to multiply it monthly for a moment.

Twitter ads have not returned strong ROI for us (direct response for politics). And dubious for persuasion (more similar to traditional commercial brand ads) though I don't have much hard survey evidence just comparative engagement stats.

I don't know if it's primarily the format, or the different type of user compared to FB, but FB is the winner hands down.