Twitter's Answer

Yesterday I played devils advocate, and posed several questions about Twitter. My main concern was this: "If your customers are all consuming your service through other interfaces, how are you going to interact with them in a meaningful way? And if those other services are duplicating your data, what value do you have left?"

I believe the answer is that Twitter has engaged the developer community to help them build and grow their user base. Why? Because their business plan only works at large scale, and the best way to achieve such a goal is to engage as many people as you can to help you whitewash that fence.

The first critical mass application that will bring us all back is search. Others may offer interfaces and the feeds of selected users, but only Twitter will have the up-to-date, authoritative version. But it's not the Database of Intentions John Battelle warned us about. It's a living, real-time feed of our connections, passions, and humanities; the first real cloud projection of our digital selves.

I don't think we have to worry about Twitter's monetization. The value to both companies and consumers, who will have the opportunity to interact with each other on an unprecedently human level in both real-time and in archive, is tremendous.