In the same way I passively pay Netflix to be able to stream movies, I'm happy to passively pay Twitter each month for the flow of conversation if it allows them to exist in the long-run, and get better.
If its viable for them to charge me $7 to $10 a month so I get an ad-free experience and they can wean off ads as main revenue source, then great. Sign me up.
EDIT: read comment by mi100hael; apparently I need to follow news better, and I'm taking my praises back.
lolwut. GitLab offers for free most of the stuff GitHub makes you pay for. And GitHub is run by a bunch of SJWs that have gone so far as to remove repos because a comment in the code used the word "retard." And despite being a platform for sharing source that hosts many prominent free software projects, the platform is 100% proprietary closed source. They offer absolutely nothing of value that can't be had better elsewhere.
My only worry for going ad-free for a fee is that it provides an argument for adverts to become even more of an inconvenience. If I could pay $5 a month to skip adverts, then what is to stop Twitter from throwing a ton of ads on their platform and then saying "if you don't like it, pay us".
I wondered if they could have started charging 'brands' and celebrities to break that barrier, but keep it free flowing for the hoipoloi like us.
You could always have multiple paid levels. $10 a year if you're a business and you want to use Twitter as a customer service portal. $100 a year for the badge if you have over 10,000 followers. $1,000 a year if you want to filter who can tweet you.
Now you get the privilege of paying for twitter and perhaps more followers too.
It's apparent that there are huge number of accounts that are created in order to promote individuals, governments, products, ...
Twitter seems to be only interested in user base growth (which would directly affect its valuation).
Both are paid software, but the $15 USD for Tweetbot Mac is absolutely worth it to me... in fact, I think it's a bargain for something I use every day.
(As a bonus, the third party clients are still ad-free as well, and no "while you were away" feature.)
It's in the spirit of, but not exactly like, Facebook charging businesses to reach more of their followers by "boosting" posts.
It would align the fees with the users who value most directly from using the service as a mass media broadcast device -- a lot of whom are businesses or quasi-businesses. They could waive fees for governments, educational institutions, non-profits, whatever.
I want to pay $3/month for twitter, but I don't think they'll ever add it.
I'm not surprised their ad revenue has been falling about 80% in the last 2 years. There's little communication in 140 characters and the chaotic stream of tweets is unattractive to most users.
Maybe Twitter could be more vaulable if owned by Google or Facebook, and integrated in the services of those giants.
