Dare Obasanjo applies some much needed critical thinking to the sort of "Kumbaya" thinking present in Anil Dash's singing of the praises of the Twitter API as a new standard that's "done":

Given that this is a common pattern, what can we expect in this instance? There are typically two expected outcomes when such clamoring for a company's proprietary platform or data format to become the property reaches a fever pitch. The first outcome is similar to what Anil Dash and Fred Wilson have described. Some competitors or related companies adopt the format or API as is to take advantage of the ecosystem that has sprung up around the winning platform. This basically puts the company (Twitter in this case) in a spot where they either have to freeze the API or bear the barbs from the community if they ever try to improve the API in a backwards incompatible way.

There's a lot more at the link - well worth reading in full, IMHO.

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