Ever since Twitter went on the warpath to isolate itself from the rest of the web, I've found myself using it less and less. Before it started to go dark, I would use Twitter as an almost "command hub" for information dissemination: I would link it to all the sites I wished to broadcast to and then write my 140 character message to spread out amongst my friends in different places. In fact, I was really annoyed that Google+ didn't support updating via Twitter as it made it one of the SoNet hubs I couldn't reach via on simple site, which is why I rarely do much of anything on that platform even now.
I was a fan of the short messaging service, mostly because it felt like e-mail in reverse. Instead of opening an new e-mail, pasting in the link I wish to share, and selecting the people I want to share it with, I can, instead, blast it out into the open for any of my followers who might be interested in what I'm sharing. It used to be more of an issue with links, given that the full length of the URL would count against your limit, but thankfully that was updated to where it's no longer a problem (which necessitates far less trips to bit.ly). The only aspect of sharing where Facebook (and Google+) has an edge is in the preview thumbnail of the link you are sharing, which I find useful (sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words after all).
The first glimmer of the enveloping darkness came when I could no longer update LinkedIn via Twitter. Not only was I seemingly never going to get the option to update Google+, but now nothing I was tweeting showed up in my LinkedIn feed. It wasn't until I read a post about Twitter cutting off that access that I realized it wasn't a simple technical problem somewhere in the pipeline.
So now I'm faced with the growing realization that it will probably be Twitter + Facebook together forever (it would be a kiss of death, in my opinion, for Twitter to cut that off). That's generally fine, it won't be the end of the world for me to only be able to update Facebook from Twitter, but with the loss of LinkedIn connectivity, probably no way to ever easily integrate Google+, and the general malaise of the official client software on all platforms (whilst cutting off access from third-party clients), it makes me want to use the service less and less. It was bad enough with people using it to basically shill advertising at me, which resulted in some culling and looking for more informative accounts to follow, but now I'm just soured on the whole experience.
I still love the whole "brevity is the soul of wit" idea that 140 character status updates subtly put forth, but I think Twitter needs to do more to signal what it's ultimately planning to do and how it intends to remain useful for me, once its "sharing command hub" status is truly over.
