Would it work if the 3rd-party devs were the customers? I.e. anyone using XYZ's app gets in for free because XYZ company pays the usage fees (out of it's ad revenue). That would avoid app.net trying to shut down services that customers like. It would also improve user adoption since it's free to the user. But how does this model compare to the customer-centric one?
Are you suggesting users pay per follower? You've essentially turned it into an advertising platform; which gets us right back where we started only worse (can't get influence at all unless you pay for it)
I think there are crucial differences between Twitter's "tweets + ads" model and the "tweets are ads" model I'm suggesting, but this probably isn't the place to discuss it.
