Twitter clash between idealism and profit Sometimes, it feels as though Twitter just can't catch a break. For years, the microblogging service beloved by the celebrity crowd was ridiculed for ignoring the hard question of how to make money. So what happens when Twitter finally gets serious about profits? Recent moves to limit what other websites and apps can do with its tweets - enabling Twitter to cash in on more of the advertising attracted by its service - have brought a backlash from the tech world. Having failed to find a suitable business model earlier, even as its private valuation soared to more than $8bn, the company has clearly been rushing to make up for lost time. Going head-to-head with companies such as Facebook and Google will take large amounts of capital: that will only come when Twitter is on its way to becoming a large business. The question now is whether the antagonism stirred up by Twitter's move is merely a sign of growing pains, or whether the company's new restrictive approach has taken it across a philosophical Rubicon. For the social media world, which is relying on a tide of advertising to float its financial fortunes, this has become a central concern. The charitable interpretation is that Twitter has been the victim of the unrealistic expectations of others. The company signalled 18 months ago that third-party developers who build Twitter clients - to attract an audience to "repackaged" tweets - were likely to lose their unimpeded access to its content. Did anyone really think the company would give up such a large part of the value created by its service indefinitely? The anger will no doubt fade. But Twitter's push for financial respectability raises deeper questions. Like other internet services that aim to become platforms, Twitter seeks to appeal to three types of customer: the users who come to tweet or to read; the developers who hope to ride on the Twitter platform, building services that bring users back more often; and the advertisers drawn by a big new audience. Keeping the interests of all three in balance is a challenge. Twitter is going all-in on advertising. However, this business model may not support the experience that users demand. The company has already shown its inexperience at handling the inherent tensions in an advertising-dependent media business. During the London Olympics, it allowed a sponsorship deal with NBC Universal to play a part in its censorship of a user who was critical of the US broadcaster. A company that has made its name by standing up to governments to defend the freedom of its users was forced to admit that it had caved in to commercial interests. Users may also rebel at seeing the distribution of their tweets becoming more restricted, in order for Twitter to "monetise" them through its own ad sales. Holding user-produced content captive - particularly when other developers have sometimes done a better job than Twitter at creating innovative ways to showcase tweets - clashes with the idealism on which the service was founded. Other business models could balance the interests of users, developers and advertisers more effectively. Bill Gross - the Californian entrepreneur who invented search engine advertising in the 1990s, only to see his idea turn into the foundation for Google's fortune - came up with his own Twitter rival last year. Called Chime.in, it rewards users by letting them pocket any advertising generated by the posts they create. App.net, another new service announced recently, would cut advertisers out of the loop entirely. Instead, it would link users with each other and with developers - with the system financed by subscriptions paid by users. But new services like this have a long way to go to compete with the treasure trove of tweets inside Twitter. And Twitter's ad-dependent path may still leave ways for the company to appease the developers and users it has recently risked alienating. One idea, which has received some consideration at Twitter, according to people familiar with the company, would set tweets free to spread widely around the Web. Under this proposal, each tweet would become a standalone, monetisable unit - clicking on any link inside the tweet would prompt an action that could be tracked and charged for, if it resulted in an interaction with a commercial brand or another media source. Splitting any revenue generated by interactions with tweets might eventually turn this into a new "Tweet economy." Twitter is still Silicon Valley's most intriguing work-in-progress. Despite its latest lurch to the commercial, it is too early to declare the experiment over. Richard Waters is the FT's West Coast editor