Dave Winer on thinks Twitter is dying

Dave Winer on whether Twitter is dying:

There comes a time when a platform has a choice whether the innovation should take place inside their own walls or to let chaos reign in the open market. Having been around this loop a few times, I think the optimal approach is for, after getting to a certain point, the platform vendor to transition from being a programming shop to being a distributor and financier. The choice is between investing in employees or entrepreneurs. The latter is a better choice, always. You just have to look at the history of tech companies to see that. Instead, Twitter is going to invest in employees. They won't be able to find enough. There will be disappointment. And there will be competitors. And in a while there will be another shiny new thing. With any luck one of them will be open and the platform will take a back seat to the innovation. And then Twitter will look like a very small place.

For me, the value of twitter is being able to share little nuggets of life with people who interest me, and I would be happy to have paid for better access to the increasing amount of content I put into the system.

The advertising model they're chasing is far less interesting for me, and lots of the people I see playing around and coming up with interesting uses for twitter seem to be moving to app.net. It'll be interesting to see, as app.net gains more traction, whether it's plan to launch as a distributor and financier from day one will work for it.