Twitter probably will eventually shut off the flow of tweet text coming out. This is consistent with everything I've seen. I never expected Facebook to make text coming out of Facebook easy to move to other places.

If Twitter were to make this change, it would be equally hard on HTML and HTTP, and for that matter JSON or JavaScript. Or Perl and Python. Basically it would shut off open access to their content flow. All tools and people who are experts at using those tools suffer equally.

But I don't see why we should care. The good stuff is already outside of Twitter and flows into it. As long as we keep that going, then Twitter will keep the pipe open in the incoming direction -- they have to because without it there would be very little to see

Unless I'm missing something big, they're a lot more dependent on us for content than we are from them. And by "us" I mean bloggers and news people. Writers of Internet news and perpsective. Gatherers of noteworthy stuff. Curators, photographers and people with eyes and ears.

 5/10/2011; 11:11:15 AM.   .

Of the hundreds of tech conferences, only five, Mesh, PaidContent, BlogHer, 0redev and Gluecon responded to the question in the first Pay-to-speak piece, all saying that they didn't do it. That leaves us to wonder about the others.

I think most of the others do it, or have thin excuses that somehow, to themselves, justify it.

For example, Jason Pontin of Technology Review writes, via email: "Our conferences aren't 'pay-to-speak,' but sponsors are now fairly immovable on this issue: today, they won't sponsor without a speaking slot."

Yes, I'm aware of that.

He continues: "We get around it the same way TED does: we invite potential sponsors to sponsor a lunch. It has the benefit of transparency, and (we think) better serves our event's attendees: insofar as a sponsor speaker has any value to attendees, he or she probably has more value if they speak openly about their products and services, rather than presenting themselves as 'thought leaders.'"

Not sure what I'm missing, but that seems to me, in every way, to be pay-to-speak.

PS: Some conferences spell out the connection between sponsorship and speaking, in writing.

 5/10/2011; 6:43:13 AM.   .