Dalton Caldwell on what Twitter could have been:
Nowadays, every time Iget a K-Mart ad in my feed, or see wonky behavior in the official clients, or see Twitter drop another bomb on their developer ecosystem, I think back and wish the pro-API guys won that internal battle.
From an outsider’s perspective it is really difficult to see what Twitter has done with all of the money they’ve raised and earned and the talent they’ve hired, acquired, and – in some cases – now lost.
Twitter is as useful to me today as it was when I joined as user ~11,000 in November 2006. That is to say, extremely useful. But when I began using it every interaction occurred through SMS and Twitterrific for Mac. Now Twitter is built into just about every site across the web, has countless applications on Windows, Mac, iOS, Android and everything in between. And it also has brand new ways to discover more content and people than ever before. And still, the most useful feature (for my use) that they’ve added in the last 5 years has been Lists.
I’m with Caldwell – I wonder what could have been. But, then again, I’m really very happy that Twitter is still around, is free, and is so versatile.
