Patents aside, I feel Twitter does not have much in terms of innovation.
Frankly, I think once Twitter (and FB) removed their RSS streams they could no longer be fit to spread news in a efficient way or claim to be anything news-related/efficient-to-spread-news.
I have a hard time using Twitter for its news-making ability. The noise is way too much preponderant. Its ability to quickly spread news depends on how close someone watches its subscribed streams and I am only checking it twice a day or every other day.
But I am still using Twitter as a micro-blogging platform and I am only following real people and NASA streams. + I have a tendency to un-subscribe from streams that send too much information that are not related to the reason why I first subscribe or that send information every 20 minutes about anything they are doing (eg: William Gibson or Dresden Codak, because I want to hear stuff about their work, not their personal life tidbits... But people close to them might be more interested in tidbits than in comments on their work so I may be the one misusing Twitter). But is everything news-worthy then ?
Your assumption is that the news consumption pattern ultimately dictates where the producers flock, which makes sense in the traditional journalistic business model. In a model where individual users contribute, the key factor is which platform gives users an easy way to speak (and I would argue that twitter has done a decent job at reducing the tweet friction)
Following on the analogy: to me they replaced a very good firehose (RSS) with a less efficient one.
> Your assumption is that the news consumption pattern ultimately dictates where the producers flock [...]
What ? No, my consumption pattern dictates where I (a user) go. And it turns out Twitter as a news media don't work for me (not twitter's fault though).
> In a model where individual users contribute, the key factor is which platform gives users an easy way to speak (and I would argue that twitter has done a decent job at reducing the tweet friction)
I don't see how removing the RSS feeds makes it less easy for a user to contribute. (shouldn't users who contribute be named producers in that context ?)
If you use the Twitter user interface to read the stream, reply and post buttons are right there. If you use an RSS reader, going to twitter to post something on your own takes an extra step. Also, RSS feeds make it easier to filter out advertising posts, whereas with the official API Twitter can ban clients which introduce Adblock.
This assumes that at least some of the RSS users migrate to the official UI, instead of abandoning the platform. But it might be a reasonable tradeoff.
> Their true value lies in the news-making ability (you hear about many news events first reported on twitter and relatively few first reported on facebook or google+ or other social networks). And in that sense, they have much to offer.
My point is that regarding news it's more efficient and pratical for the consumer/reader to get them via RSS than via Twitter streams. I am only dealing with the 'getting news' pov here. The producer and the conversationalist issues aren't the same as those of the reader.