The end of the Twitter as we knew it

It's been a slow train coming. Predictable. Actually predicted by Dave Winer and others. But new terms announced by Twitter signal there is no turning back.

Marco Arment assesses the new rules and finds them to lay the groundwork for Twitter potentially requiring all Twitter clients to run whatever advertising Twitter pushes into people's streams. (I assume I'll still be able to use my son Dan's ad-scrubber on a desktop web browser, but I don't know about the mobile interfaces.)

And Ben Brooks writes: "We like to make analogies to Apple in tech blogging circles, so here goes: this is the moment in Twitter’s life where they kicked Steve Jobs out of the company and told Sculley to run it."

Is there another?

App.net recently announced it had hit its funding goal, and I see others are participating in its Alpha launch. Based on email I'm getting, I think I'm one of the next 7000 in line to participate. I'm eager to jump in!

A key question in App.net's potential viability may be: how long will Twitter permit App.net to publish to Twitter?

Photo: Brian Sawyer / Flickr.