And this is why Twitter wants to kill the third-party clients. Twitter has decided that ads are going to be its revenue stream. The only way they can guarantee you see their ads is if you use the website or an official client. If nobody uses those, nobody sees the ads, so Twitter makes no revenue. So they have to get your friends onto the website or an official client to stay alive.
This logic assumes, of course, that Twitter's web app and official clients are good enough substitutes for the third-party clients that if the third parties go away people will use the official clients rather than just stop using Twitter altogether. Which remains to be seen.
This logic assumes, of course, that Twitter's web app and official clients are good enough substitutes for the third-party clients that if the third parties go away people will use the official clients rather than just stop using Twitter altogether. Which remains to be seen.