"Knowing someone's got a thousand, million or a billion Twitter followers is like knowing that they have really nice potted plants in their office. Whatevs. It's not a measurement of "success".

Profitability is.

Like it or not."

What I dislike about these discussions is that they almost always revolve around money and numbers as if that's what this industry is all about. As a writer/editor I got into this line of work to communicate ideas and effect social change not to to churn out copy to pad out the advertising pages. Sure, of course the media I write for need to keep afloat, but they certainly don't need to make 'profit'. If they could break even, shouldn't that be enough? Why do they have to make profit?

You're right, the Walrus is not a good example of a for-profit business - and that's precisely the point. It's not. It's a non-profit publication with a mission: "to be a national general interest magazine about Canada and its place in the world. We are committed to publishing the best work by the best writers from Canada and elsewhere on a wide range of topics for readers who are curious about the world."

They don't set out to: "make heaps of dough and buy yachts for our staff".

So, in that context, if they manage to develop a successful Twitter campaign and attract new readers and build community in a novel online space, even if that doesn't bring in hard cash in spades, it's still a good thingTM for all sorts of reasons not relating to revenue.

Maybe it's time we stop thinking about information as an industry and start seeing it more as a human endeavour worthy of our collective support. If we did, maybe our conversations about 'metrics' would be more focused on other more important considerations than profit.