[rm_dash_rf]

This is where I think people are still missing the boat on twitter.

Twitter is not an aggregator of data to be passed along. Twitter is a massive un-walled global community. Though people may want access to the data as a bi product of that. The future is in cultivating community, not protocols.

[mxuribe]

I respectfully disagree as to your note about twitter being "un-walled". The easiest test would be: if twitter would shut down right now, and its infrastructure would go dark as a consequence, could you/our/any community on twitter continue? I believe the answer is "no", because its centralized (and proprietary). I do agree with you that cultivating communities are important...though we do need some universally accepted, open, and available protocol to allow for cultivating of communities...sort of like what legacy protocols have done - e.g. email, irc, etc.).

[rm_dash_rf]

I see the power of twitter in its brevity not its depth. Its a content gateway.

I think legacy protocols such as email, IRC, SOAP...have proven time after time that there is no need for an information specific protocol.

Twitter could be more open, but I think they realized that would be giving away the keys to the castle.