Twitter can sell high speed access to all tweets, and their costs should be really low. Long term it could be a midsize, but profitable company as long as they don't get into debt.
They already do this [1]. They used to sell this access to 'value-add' data analytics resellers as well, but in 2015 they acquired one instead [2] and stopped reselling it [3].
Seems sensible. They wouldn't need the gazillions of staff they have at the moment working on building and selling an advertising platform. If they were bought by a Google, there would be economies of scale on the hosting side.
But it's become an almost toxic brand because as well as realtime news, it is a troll's paradise. I guess this is one reason why the big guys are hesitant to take it on.
It seems like Facebook is eating up more and more of this market because they are better at keeping the trolls out.
