Allen Stern asks what ought to be a very basic question about Twitter: where's the beef?

Most of the heavy Twitter users use the service via the API and "offsite". I actually use the Web site and refresh the page every few minutes while I am at home. How can they monetize the API usage? If a Twitter user already paid $15 for a piece of software, would they then be willing to pay Twitter for their account? It's like paying for mIRC and then having to pay for the use of IRC itself.

The usual suspects - Dave Winer and Jason Calacanis - chime in with "what me worry?" posts, claiming that once Twitter is "up to scale", there will be plenty of business opportunity. Uh huh - that's pretty much what E-Bay thought when they bought Skype, and it didn't really pan out now, did it? If your service is free, and most people using it rarely visit your site, exactly how much value is there in the "massive scale" that Calacanis talks about? How valuable are Twitter tie in products when the API can be wrapped in minutes?

There's another thing about the "just monetize with ads" theory, too. The entire ad model - the one used by Google, by TV, and by radio - is mostly an agreed upon fiction. Advertisers pretend that "impressions" get them business, and owners cheerfully sell airtime. I'm not sure when the air will come out of the ad model tires - heck, maybe it never will. I'm not sure I'd want to bet my entire business on that shaky a foundation though.

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