Wow, it figures less than a week after I formally apologize to Twitter, the “cybertaurians” have come out in full force demanding 99.9% uptime, future monetization plans or else! I joined the conversation today over at Jeremiah Owyang’s blog where he asking for Twitter to take its next step towards a mature service. Shel Israel a day earlier blogged a very well-written letter to Evan Williams and Biz Stone regarding his views, that people are now talking and that Twitter must get to the next level. And this is two examples of those discussing Twitter, there are plenty.
This brings me to my point (and for the most part, most likely perceived as contrarian), where exactly is the inflection point for a service on where these consumer demands are placed on it. It isn’t because people are paying for it and demand their return on investment, Twitter is free. Shel and Jeremiah both mention the need for a disclosed monetization strategy. Why? I’m trying to think back to 1997 to remember if the public demanded similar things of Google before the nascent ad words marketplace was disclosed.
Now, to be clear, I am not taking an investor’s view here, if I was Fred Wilson and Union Square Ventures, I would want to be sure Biz and team had a plan for platform scalability and a long term monetization plan before I invested a few million. But my view is consumers do not share that same right. Can they vote with their feet and go to competing services? Of course and that is their choice.
But the bigger question is bigger than Twitter alone. As consumers, how much should we expect and demand from ‘free’ services? And what is the point in which we should expect services to take the next step in maturation, having pre-conceived notions about their evolution or even their ultimate goal as a service?
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