Ian Betteridge responds to the idea of adding functionality to Twitter as Dave Winer and I have been advocating.
I'll say it again, the key to extending Twitter is to do it in a fashion that does not degrade the experience of those who are using it with an SMS model. I think this is doable. Dave Winer suggests one approach. There are others. There's no reason why the Twitter service itself can't manage which messages can get through based on the client being used. IM apps do it already.
In fact, to me, IM apps are a good model for how richer content can add to the Twitter service. MSN Messenger can send ink--except to an older client or on a Mac. It handles it with grace. Video? Sound recording? Photos? They're all supported in one way or another. None of these I don't degrades the IM experience too much. (Some send out too many notifications of what can and can't be done, though.) One more other lesson from IM--there's nothing stopping "meta" tags in the text itself, that are converted to graphics on the client side. There are millions of people that send short text sequences, such as LOL or whatever, that are converted to an animated graphics on client apps that support them. If the client can't handle it or the feature is disabled, the text only version is displayed. Anyway, IM clients can be very rich, why can't Twitter?
So I'll put it this way: If a design can be implemented that does not infringe on the way that SMS users of Twitter want to use the service, would they still object to others using other features? The answer to this question may help everyone figure out the next step.


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