Talking about Twitter in the same breath as YouTube just doesn't make sense - YouTube's troubles stem from the fact that its costs are through the roof, being a streaming video site and all. In order to come out of the red, they have to make a pretty large amount off of each viewer, and that's tough to do when advertising rates are depressed.
Twitter, on the other hand, sends 140 character messages back and forth. Yes, they've had scaling issues, but that's because they blew up from a tiny operation into a major success overnight without the manpower to handle the growth, not an indication that their costs are too high. If they flip pretty much any monetization switch, they'll become profitable quickly.
They cut that for a lot of countries, yet they say they can operate for years. Why not spend that money they are sitting on with innovating their service, creating features that can actually make money.
"Good for Twitter, but this will not translate into any money for Biz Stone, one of the site’s founders, until the microblogging platform is monetized."
Umm, tell that to the YouTube guys (ironic given that that is the example he uses to make his point). There's no law that says your company has to turn a profit before anyone can buy it.
In the microeconomic sense you're right, in the macroeconomic sense you're wrong.
Selling off a company based on users that aren't monetizable is basically a ponzi scheme that just passes the buck to the next idiot in line until it all collapses.
It's not really a Ponzi scheme because the next guy down the line might find value in it. Ever since Madoff, everyone has inaccurately referred to everything as a Ponzi scheme. It's not.
And even if it were, that quote would still be stupid because founders who don't monetize get rich all the time.
Twitter, on the other hand, sends 140 character messages back and forth. Yes, they've had scaling issues, but that's because they blew up from a tiny operation into a major success overnight without the manpower to handle the growth, not an indication that their costs are too high. If they flip pretty much any monetization switch, they'll become profitable quickly.