Drewbot • We live in an increasingly liquid world, and...

“ We live in an increasingly liquid world, and everything of interest seems to flow through the Twitter stream first. These bits are linked by URLs, usually shortened ones, and we now generally click on the links to see what they point to. That takes us out of Twitter, and inevitably, Twitter management would like us to stay in Twitter…So the real fallout of this most recent move isn’t just the crumbling of the dreams of photo sharing startups, but the reverberations through any service that is operating as an appliance on top of Twitter, resolving any sort of URLs and rendering them for users.
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Stowe Boyd, In A Liquid World, Twitter Will Own Everything In The Stream

Really interesting point. I agree that Twitter is positioned nicely to subsume a lot of bits if the world continues to be liquid. However, I don’t think Twitter has shown they can consistently execute the front-end in a stable or interesting way to exert any control over anything build on this stream. Their deference to Photobucket and reliance on acquisition are the moves of a company that can’t lock down their experience without drastic defensive measures. Further, I don’t think Twitter’s usage numbers have ever been universally impressive when it comes to general, mass-media consumption.

As Twitter grows in the shadow of Facebook, Apple, and Google I would bet it evolves into a dumb pipe. A channel that allows for the easy, immediate distribution of bits in the simplest manner possible. If we were to take the recent rumor of Twitter integration in iOS a few steps further, it’s not hard to imagine the Twitter app completely disappearing. The interface would be subsumed by the OS. This insight is surely driving development at Facebook, where the sheer size of the active user base and clear control of their interface gives them the right to attempt such a gambit.

The flexibility of Twitter is why it’s still here and thriving. However, the same flexibility landed them in an uncomfortable position today: they’re rapidly becoming a messaging and broadcast infrastructure without a business plan to match.