Companies are only willing to pay for enterprise features if you have users (and the features are meaningfully above and beyond what they can do on a free account).
Users aren’t willing to pay jack shit for social media and there’s no path to forcing people to pay for it that can possibly work.
If you’re paying several thousands a month for social media managers, paying an extra 500 a month is not that big of a deal.
That’s only massive companies. There aren’t that many of them. $500/month from a couple hundred big enterprise clients won’t pay the bills.
You need medium sized businesses to pay to use it.
And even massive companies won’t pay $500/month when you completely remove the userbase by making it impossible to use without paying. $5/year would remove 99% of the userbase overnight.
You’re convoluting several things here.
First of all, even medium sized businesses often enough employ several people as their social media managers, not all in full-time, but there’s already a big cost associated with just “being there”. Then, you are severely underestimating what businesses usually pay for in support roles. Databases easily cost six figures in licenses per year, for example. All the MS365 stuff isn’t free either. 500€ is a drop in the bucket - especially for marketing, and especially, if there are compelling enough features, to reduce SM-team staffing.
And finally, you’re arguing ex post - the question/my point was: would it ever have been possible for him to turn a profit? You’re basically arguing “the patient could not have been rescued at any point, as he is currently dead”. Also, Twitter is definitely not “dead” as you’re implying. Yes, user base is dwindling, but it’s an erosion, not implosion.
PS: we’re both using oxymoronic handles, so I guess we have to be best friends now.
