[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.