While I am no longer active on Twitter, I cant deny the fact that Twitter has become a massive distribution channel for content,links etc. There are two other such online distribution channels -- Google and Facebook. And they make lot,lot of money.

Twitter might still not have a viable business model, but they can experiment (now that they have a huge user base and data) and try to find one. While its not easy and obvious at times to find a viable business model, just reaching the sheer distribution scale as Twitter's is a huge hurdle in itself that very few incumbents will ever reach.

I'm not arguing that - Twitter has grown much more than I expected. I was referring to the "I'm sure they know things us mere mortals are not privy to" argument.

twitter is internet plumbing. it doesn't matter if it makes money, it drives ridiculous amounts of ancillary commerce. There's plenty of people that are willing to pay money to keep it alive because it serves their business. Infrastructure tends to be money losing businesses when they start; think youtube and more recently, facebook.

Most physical infrastructure is insanely costly to create in the first place. If a utility charges too much money for your liking and you don't have a couple billion to compete with them, tough shit.

The infrastructure of Facebook and YouTube and Twitter could be replicated by a small team of smart developers in a matter of months, probably costing only a few million dollars. The only thing they have going for them is network effects, which are less powerful than we think when there is a viable competitor (e.g. MySpace being overtaken by Facebook).