For one thing, the OP author is responsible for the whole meme, and is posturing his startup as the litmus test for the idea (which is probably fair).
From a certain perspective, the whole idea of Google is to get users off the search engine faster, which doesn't sound like a great way to make money as compared to Yahoo! whose core idea was to keep them on the site as long as possible to serve more ads at them. In the end, the Google idea is more profitable because users prefer to use things that don't parasite them by a huge margin, especially if both are free.
Caldwell's idea, as I understand it, is that there are a lot of interesting applications that could use Twitter's technology that aren't or can't be written because of their restrictions (or it would suck because of their ads), and that people would be willing to pay for a service like Twitter's if it enabled access to or the ability to author these applications. He thinks he can win at choosing to be the commodity by being first and doing the best job. The user value is hard to envision, because the apps that will be powered by this social infrastructure don't exist yet or are perverted by the presence of ads and Twitter's own self-interest.
From a certain perspective, the whole idea of Google is to get users off the search engine faster, which doesn't sound like a great way to make money as compared to Yahoo! whose core idea was to keep them on the site as long as possible to serve more ads at them. In the end, the Google idea is more profitable because users prefer to use things that don't parasite them by a huge margin, especially if both are free.
Caldwell's idea, as I understand it, is that there are a lot of interesting applications that could use Twitter's technology that aren't or can't be written because of their restrictions (or it would suck because of their ads), and that people would be willing to pay for a service like Twitter's if it enabled access to or the ability to author these applications. He thinks he can win at choosing to be the commodity by being first and doing the best job. The user value is hard to envision, because the apps that will be powered by this social infrastructure don't exist yet or are perverted by the presence of ads and Twitter's own self-interest.