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Comment by thinkzig | Hacker News Reader

I couldn't agree with this more. It goes back to the "should Twitter be taking usernames from people?" discussion we had here a week or so ago. Twitter is free. You're not paying for it. It doesn't owe you anything. Plan accordingly.

On the flip side, this begs the question "When is Twitter going to start charging to use the API?" It seems clear that there is some demand for it.

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http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question

It is a logical fallacy to beg the question.

Given the section on colloquial usage,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Begging_the_question#Contempora...

I'd say that's rather prescriptive, maybe even SNOOTy.

http://instruct.westvalley.edu/lafave/DFW_present_tense.html

That's what I said the first time I got zapped for that, but the one said, "'Begs the question' is a technical term with a precise meaning and we need to preserve that precise meaning," and at that point I gave in.

Yeah, I agree that it's still at the point where people will look down on you for using it in the colloquial manner.

"Once the classic meaning of a phrase begins losing ground to a less useful but more apparent one, it's time to tell it goodbye." - "beg the question", Roy Blount Jr., _Alphabet Juice_

sounds like the term "cloud computing"

Step 1: Define question begging.

Step 2: Show that the statement does not use your definition of question begging.

Hoisted by your own circular logic, question-begging petard!

I think you meant,

"this begets the question."

If Twitter begins to charge for API access and reports even the slightest success in doing so, expect the rest of the social web to follow suit in the fashion of the economic bailouts.

Is anyone making money with Twitter API? Are they still in this recession?

The chance they will have success charging for their api is low. They might still report success since it's in their interests to do so.

Twitterific is making money from it.

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