I can't help but seeing this as not being good for Twitter. At all.

No social media service can really be an island, least of all Twitter. I understand the desire to put more meat on the bones of the site, and I even kinda-dig the idea of migrating away from pure-tweets and into the realm of "cards"... but the more they clamp down, the more systems slip through their fingers.

What do y'all think?

"Neither company has explained the reasons behind this most recent change, but the timing certainly suggests a direct link to new policies that dramatically alter how third parties can interact with the Twitter service."

I think Twitter is tired of being a phone book and has no intention of being the new email (at least not anymore). Frankly I think that's dumb.

I like the sentiment in Justin Vincent's "It’s Time for an Open Twitter (a 501c3)." Perhaps a bit unrealistic, but a nice thought.

Twitter as a kind of public media service is a very, very attractive idea to me.

Frankly, as a for-profit venture I think they're doomed. There are just too many people who resist it.

I mean, they invented something as impactful as the telephone. Could you imagine NOT being able to profit off of it?

The trouble is they need to pay back their investors exponentially. If you asked people to pay a buck a month to stick around they'd be rolling in dough, but it's just not enough. So they want to get in on sweet sweet ads.

But what do I know? I didn't pay for app.net.

Oh I hear you. If we weren't in the days of venture capitalist seeking exponential ROI I could see them surviving as for-profit.

That's the problem these days, however. A sustainable business isn't sexy enough for Wall St. these days. Hence my assessment that they are doomed.

Tumblr's response to The VERGE's request:

To our dismay, Twitter has restricted our users’ ability to "Find Twitter Friends" on Tumblr. Given our history of embracing their platform, this is especially upsetting. Our syndication feature is responsible for hundreds of millions of tweets, and we eagerly enabled Twitter Cards across 70 million blogs and 30 billion posts as one of Twitter's first partners. While we're delighted by the response to our integrations with Facebook and Gmail, we are truly disappointed by Twitter's decision.

Doesn't it make sense that there would have to be a third path in mind already in the minds of Twitter's leadership? That is, the "find all your friends on Twitter" is a two-way street no matter where it appears. People join Twitter because of the ubiquitousness of other social networks' using Twitter to connect people.

There's a new corporate entity available in many states - the Public Benefit Corporation -that sits squarely between the for-profit and the not-for-profit world. Of all the social networks, it seems Twitter is the best positioned to leverage this new business form - doing good for the public and getting some of the perks given to not-for-profits in the process while remaining a for-profit entity.

Bob, this is great stuff, and I think that facts and info about PBC's deserves their own Branch.

Wow. A branch on Public Benefit Corps (and Benefit Corps) is a tall order! To date, there are so many variants at the state levels. I'll start tinkering in my head on it.

In this new social side-economy where startups are bootstrapped and Kickstartered ("Crowdstrapped?"), aren't the initial core employees "stakeholders" in very new ways? Doesn't something have to give?

Values and mores take different textures in places started by small cores of idea-evangelists conjuring the next successful feats of coding alchemy. I look at startups like Twitter (or Xobni, or Evernote, etc) and it's pretty clear that that the good intentions of non-profit models are insufficient while staid corporate structures (and mores) risk harm to creation.