There is a huge debate going on in all corners of twitter-land. This is not the debate about The Business Model or Rails Is Slow. This is not even the debate about Decentralize Twitter. It is a debate that doesn’t make the front page of TechMeme and you won’t find much about it in the Google index. You see, the biggest debate about Twitter is an internal one.
I am sure there are a huge number of people like me who have been questioning each day whether or not that is their last day using Twitter. The downtime is killing it for me. The value of investing time and energy in Twitter is quickly dwindling (whether that value is derived from networking, promotions, or personal expression). I want Twitter to succeed, but much more importantly I want the 140 character medium to survive, and my experience has been that the most important thing about 140 characters is the connected community.
Part of me wants to wait for people to congregate at another service, but I would much rather there be a spec for multiple services to interoperate. It is going to happen, eventually.
The best possible scenario I can think of is for Twitter to go ahead and spearhead the effort. An open spec could be Twitter’s best chance at survival. Otherwise I am going to wake up one morning and the debate will be over; I will quit using Twitter.
Update: After writing this I have seen several conversations about this very thing on Twitter (during the time it has been working).
