I don't see these options as mutually exclusive. How is consumption of information canceling out sharing information? Especially with the ability to email tweets now. This seems to run contrary to what Dalton is writing about.

My favorite twitter comment is that you don't have to tweet to use twitter. You can contribute to the news, and you can consume it, Twitter isn't pushing for people to use just pursue one.

Twitter is pushing people into using their service in particular ways (eg, by restricting clients), and by the sounds of what is to come - the advertising will gradually get more aggressive.

Dalton understands what makes social media work - and you can see it in how he advertises App.net. If you ask "what is App.net" and look for Dalton's answer somewhere - he never explicitly states. He is deliberately vague about what it is - because it isn't anything until its users have defined what it is.

That's how twitter became successful in the first place - the service was defined by its users to become what it is now. Not just twitter, but every major social network grew the same way, and the ones that failed are those that didn't understand this.

So Twitter, Inc. need to be careful not to piss off it's content creators with aggressive advertising or constraining how they interact with it. What Twitter, Inc want their service to be is ultimately not their decision - it's up to the users.

Well put, it's a 100% user driven service, and has been historically friendly to developers. While the later point may be shifting, they can never lose site of their content creators value, and have to actively listen and work with them in order to make their publishing as easy as possible. I think that makes sense of their recent purchase of Vine, a beautifully crafted service on the twitter platform.