How @Twitter can help #journalism while saving its own ass
by Doc Searls Wednesday, October 19, 2016

Twitter has famously been selling itself to other companies for the last few months—with no takers, so far.

So here is a better idea. Zig while the others zag, by doing what no other B2B "social media" company is willing to do—yet—but will likely try after the advertising bubble finally pops.

Go B2C. Sell services direct.

Start with the high end. Make your best users into your first and best customers. The easiest way to start is by offering an ad-free Twitter experience. Lots of people will be willing to pay for that.  

But the most leveraged way is by turning the best of Twitter's usage into an even more valuable version of what it already is: the @AP for everybody with real and worthwhile news (or plain old information) to share.

Start with a low $ amount per month or year, and offer some value-ads that I'm sure your new customers would be glad to request. You'll bring in lots of the free-range journalists who have been wandering in the desert ever since "social media" and clickbait-grade "content" (and the shitty surveillance-fed adtech that pays for it) laid waste both to blogging and respectable publishing.

As @dmarti said long ago, "Information wants to be $6.95."

I'd gladly pay that. Or more.