The idea of paying not to have ads is not too bad. People that use Twitter all day long might appreciate this. They're the types who would pay anyway. Honestly, Twitter ads just get in the way and I've already trained myself to ignore them. Fortunately for me I'm in Japan and all of the ads show up in Japanese, so they're easy for me to skim over when I'm reading lists of tweets in English. The other option is to use TweetDeck, where I don't see ads at all (yet).

Reality might be something else. see:

The desperation plays keep coming from Twitter, including a new marketing executive, while also promising to hide her marketing efforts from “elite” users of the platform.

The new executive is Leslie Berland, formerly of American Express. The New York Post credits Berland with building AmEx’s presence on social media platforms, including Twitter, as its executive V.P. of advertising, marketing, and digital partnerships.

The Post brings in Re/code to explain how Twitter power users will be able to make do without advertising, in a bid to keep them from departing the platform in annoyance and taking their huge followings with them:

For the past few months, the social media company has stopped displaying ads, or has dramatically reduced the number of ads it displays, to a small group of some of its most prominent and active users.

For those people, Twitter is an ad-free, or nearly ad-free, experience.

[breitbart.com...]

I realize many of us prefer Tech sites for info... but sometimes... it's political and crony marketing/capitalism.

Twitter growth hasn't stopped, but it's not growing fast enough to keep their stock price up, so this could be seen as a bit of a desperation move. "Let's not annoy our top users so much with ads" could help keep some of the base placated. This could be an interesting strategy if it were opened up to the userbase: The more you use Twitter the less ads we'll show you.

Fortunately I was not drinking a beer when I read that, else I might have spewed and sent you a bill for a new monitor. :)

These days it seems the more you use Twitter the less valid one might be. $17 a share down from $69 in a short time. But they do have some cash to burn through before bottoms up, so Twitter is not on the ropes... yet.