There’s lots of speculation about Twitter’s business model, from the serious to the comic. The firm’s backers claim the company has plenty of money for the long haul. In fact, given the openness Twitter has traditionally shown with its APIs, the model could be to let all of us speculate about it, then pick the winners.

But I’ll bite. I have an idea how Twitter could make money.

Most of the business models I’ve seen charge the publisher. Why not charge the audience?

We live in an attention economy. We’ve moved beyond the information economy — now, anyone can get access to anything. Instead, we want to know what’s worth our time. Google makes money by ranking information based on relevance; Paris Hilton makes money by pointing us at the scandalous; newspaper editors make money by selecting topics they think their readers will find interesting.

Lots of people are experts on things. I’d pay to follow someone smart and knowledgeable. Maybe only $10 a year, but in return, they’d search for useful information and tell me about it. They might be an expert on cloud computing, or web monitoring, or sustainable food, or transparent government. I’d follow them. I’d get links from them (which only susbscribers would receive, of course) to reports they’d written, or news they’d found.

Read more »