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Nobody is claiming it's a technological marvel, and I certainly didn't mention economics.

I'm just saying that it's kind of strange seeing people say so-and-so is doing essential-thing to successful-product completely wrong.

I mean, maybe, just maybe, part of Twitter's success is due to it being so simple. Due to the 140 character limit, due to the lack of features like image uploading, etc. Maybe, just maybe, the ecosystem that has been built around Twitter — largely due to lack of features — actually plays in their favor?

I just don't see how you can be so sure that everything they're doing is wrong, and they're successful in spite of it, rather than successful because of exactly what they are doing.

>> "maybe, just maybe, part of Twitter's success is due to it being so simple. Due to the 140 character limit, due to the lack of features like image uploading, etc."

Oh I absolutely agree. But I'm not sure that's sustainable. Where do twitter go next? They've effectively said "We're all about one thing, and no extra features." How can they move forward from that? Also as I've said before, fashions change. How soon until twitter is 'so totally last decade'.

They added lists not too long ago, and they added native support for retweeting while at the same time making it even simpler.

Twitter aren't limited by your inability to imagine where they can go next. If anything, their limited feature set gives them more options on what to do next, rather than fewer.

I'm going to have to disagree with just about everything you wrote there...

However, twitter isn't about engagement. It's not about communication. It's about broadcasting 1->many

Why does "communication" only count on a 1 to 1 sense? Furthermore how can we possibly jump to the conclusion that just because it's about broadcasting 1 to many, that it is not about engagement? As a service I find it's engagement has a much longer-tail than that of facebook's. Once you've seen all the pictures, added all the obscure acquaintances, and checked all the relationship updates facebook becomes more of a weekly "check to keep up" service than one of daily engagement. Twitter on the other hand is constantly engaging because it's one and only service is to allow people to bring fresh content/media/insight to many people with one update. There's no dilution of which feature i'm going to use now, or which one i'm going to get good at.

As a business decision, giving away access to 3rd party developers seems like favoring short term growth well above profit and the future

Really? If you realized your main product was this successful communication protocol (pg's words, not mine) you would want to limit it's usage to just your own domain? Your value is in the protocol itself, not where it's being used. If I was an investor, worrying why people don't use twitter.com would fall somewhere between "did i leave the coffee maker on this morning?" and "where did i park my car?".

>> "Your value is in the protocol itself, not where it's being used."

Can you name any open protocols that are profitable businesses? I don't think writers of the email RFC made all that much money out of the email spec :/

The protocol doesn't have to be open for everyone forever. When these feeder companys begin profitting, and when Twitter determines the time is right, they can charge for acess to the protocol.

It won't really matter though.

The 3rd party clients can all just get together and setup their own backend. Most people are using 3rd party clients anyway.

If a few influential people with tons of followers were using twitter client X, and that client decided to stop using the twitter backend, and instead use something else, you'd likely see a mass exodus (As long as the client was good enough and available on multiple platforms etc).

I guess my point is that the valuable bit, the bit people care about, is the client, and who they can access from it. The network, protocol, backend etc, meh.

ya.. correct

You can say the same by clicking on the up arrow right next to the comment. :)