What Twitter Can Learn From Spotify

After all, what does Spotify do? It takes a corpus of stuff (music) and finds endless new ways to show it to users. Users can save the stuff they know they like (a library), explore things curated by other users (playlists) or turn to the app's machine-learning tools for ultra-personalized recommendations (Discover Weekly and the like).

He tells The Verge that Spotify will incorporate a hybrid business model with three distinct parts. One will involve the typical user subscription revenue, another is advertising dollars through its podcast ad marketplace and music streaming ads, and the third is a la carte options, like helping musicians and podcasters sell merch, tour tickets, or... See more

What was most interesting to me, though, was Dorsey’s comment about helping people manage paywalls. One of the biggest challenges to the subscription economy is the tension between leveraging social media to acquire new customers — which like social media itself, requires content that is free to access — and the fact that running a business means a... See more