I agree with your main thrust about efficiency and sustainability being key components of a long term business.

But Twitter is not a long term business; it may survive and morph into something else. It is not unreasonable for the owners not to have a long term plan. It takes much different skills to run a 100 person or 10,000 person business from a startup business.

Like the Man of the Moon, any large scale enterprise has beneficial unintended consequences. I look at Twitter like I look at theoretical research: it may be inefficient but if there are enough experiments like this then greater good will result.

What your analysis misses is a measure of effectiveness. When in startup and growth mode then effectiveness is what counts; thereafter is all about making your business efficient in order to maximise the return on investment.

I don;t mind Twitter’s business model at all, what I really dislike is large, inefficient government subsidized businesses with lousy service. (let’s start with banking)

PS
What are your thoughts on the FairTax? Scores high on efficiency, collectability, avoidability and simplicity

It’s nice to believe or at least dream that there could be a society where it wasn’t about money. A society that was not so much about efficiency even but rather about doing the right thing for a change.

But the great green god of money keeps getting in the way of the utopian dream. I have know very few people in my life who adhere to the put money second principal and stick with it. Are there some, yes, who are they? Usually people who don’t have to worry about money, people who don’t have day to day job they need to feed a family with. And this is by no fault of their own, rather a result of the pressures society places on us all.

MANY times I suspect they are people who came up from the ranks, clawing and scratching, putting money as the goal, and as someone else said were ones who worked harder and smarter, but not necessarily for the right reasons. We will never know how many little people they crushed along the way.

I am no Mother Teresa, and I doubt that anyone else can claim to be the new Mahatma Gandhi either. These two and one other that I can think of set examples. Doing the greatest good, for as many as possible without thought of self. As we say from where I come from , that’s a tough row to hoe.

I know your intent was not to say that they shouldn’t have some thought of self and that they should do everything for the greater good. But I do think you went a wee bit far on how you belittled those of us who are not independently wealthy and who don’t manage large multinational companies. We do matter, and we do make a difference, collectively if nothing else.

I learned early in life, that everything you do, every word your utter that is heard has an impact on someone. You may never know exactly the affect you have on someone by your actions or your words, but rest assured they do have consequences. The more positive your actions and words, (proven fact) the more positive the affect they have.

And when we stop putting the money in front of the more important things in life such as family, friends and those we care about , the better off we will all be. How true are your motivations?

Which one is more advanced, and why?

Both have been on the planet the same amount of time. Both are humans.

BTW, the word “evolved” is way out of context here. Evolution has to do with genetics, not SW development and money.

You get what you pay for. If you use a free service, quit crying about ANY aspect of it.

If you want a more professional, less spammy version, and it does not exist, make it yourself.

Nobody will ever change the world or get their version of reality pushed onto everyone and everything else.

The Germans tried that once already.

If the service is free and even whimsically useful then it generates a big user-base. Which as you seem to have argued, leads the unimaginative ignoramuses (venture capitalists) to infer great profit.
Though this might be true sometimes if the user-base is successfully monetized, but fails most of the time, as Internet is considered synonymous with “FREE”. Nobody wants to pay for something which was originally free (eg. email).

Now the service originally offered, must be pretty value-less, as majority of the services on the Internet are. If it was offered for free to a big user base, means that the only input required for the service is code, server, electricity and the owner’s fantasies about choking on cash.

Hence if this service goes paid, then its a guaranteed fail. Another service provider will offer those services for “FREE”, and we know why. Ah, how deluded he must be too!
Since referral sales and adsense do not amount to business, they can be ignored from consideration.

Thus, problems can not be solved by free services. Problems can not be solved for free. Also, there is nothing “FREE” in real life. People seem to have forgotten that business exist in real life. Even the so called online businesses, do not exist as mere code in some server as the Internet, is merely a facilitator for business.

As only stuff on the internet can be free, and not in real life, hence by implication, “It is impossible that any business can be done for free” (unless you are selling from amazon and getting paid to tweet while you scout mechanical turk for that simple looking translation job).

* I have started to wonder if its worthwhile to render tediously a point which seems to have a very commonsense construction. So I am going to stop *

PROBLEMS CAN NOT BE SOLVED FOR FREE.
BUSINESS CAN NOT BE DONE FOR FREE.

Starting free isn’t anything new. Lots of sites do. Many people suggest that all blogs/sites should start free till they develop a following (which I don’t personally agree with in most cases). It’s only unsustainable if they can’t find a non-obtrusive method of displaying ads, or getting commission.