Twitter expanding my Web2.0 world and a broken Facebook application

I signed up to Twitter months ago (primarily to squat on the username!) and have never used it, to be honest I have not really seen the usefulness of it, pointless short messages along the lines of "The dog has just broken wind", "I have a headache" and " Did I just hear Hall and Oates singing "Locomotion"? That can't possibly be right ... can it?" (thanks to Wil Wheaton for the last one)

But I decided to give it a go, and of course in the spirit of Web2.0 decided to install the twitter application on my new Facebook page but it bombed out with page full of compiler debug code, a little investigation and it seems I am not the only new user experiencing the problem.

AJ Vaynerchuk posted about the problem five days ago and there is a discussion thread on Facebook full of "me too" posts, but as yet no response and no fix from either party.

Interestingly it coincides with a number of articles and programs I have recently read and listened too concerning the dangers of building a product and/or business model on the top of a platform over which you have no control. If that platform changes, fails or disappears then your are in trouble. While am sure this is more likely to be sloppy coding it is an interesting portent.

Listening to this week's BBC World Service program Digital Planet it had an interview with Jonathan Zittrain who has written a book called The Future of the Internet--And How to Stop It, the synopsis on Amazon.co.uk reads

In "The Future of the Internet: And How to Stop It", Jonathan Zittrain explores the dangers the internet faces if it fails to balance ever more tightly controlled technologies with the flow of innovation that has generated so much progress in the field of technology. Zittrain argues that today's technological market is dominated by two contrasting business models: the generative and the non-generative. The generative models - the PCs, Windows and Macs of this world - allow third parties to build upon and share through them. The non-generative model is more restricted; appliances such as the XBox, iPod and TomTom might work well, but the only entity that can change the way they operate is the vendor. If we want the internet to survive we need to change. People must wake up to the risk or we could lose everything.

On the Amazon.com website it has a slightly different synopsis

This extraordinary book explains the engine that has catapulted the Internet from backwater to ubiquity—and reveals that it is sputtering precisely because of its runaway success. With the unwitting help of its users, the generative Internet is on a path to a lock down, ending its cycle of innovation—and facilitating unsettling new kinds of control.

IPods, iPhones, Xboxes, and TiVos represent the first wave of Internet-centered products that can’t be easily modified by anyone except their vendors or selected partners. These “tethered appliances” have already been used in remarkable but little-known ways: car GPS systems have been reconfigured at the demand of law enforcement to eavesdrop on the occupants at all times, and digital video recorders have been ordered to self-destruct thanks to a lawsuit against the manufacturer thousands of miles away. New Web 2.0 platforms like Google mash-ups and Facebook are rightly touted—but their applications can be similarly monitored and eliminated from a central source. As tethered appliances and applications eclipse the PC, the very nature of the Internet—its “generatively,” or innovative character—is at risk.

It is an interesting observation and prophecy