Steven Max Patterson says that despite what others say Twitter's model is sustainable. I'd like to add this.

If you remember dreaming about what the Internet would be able to do 10 years ago, did you imagine a notification system that worked between people spread out everywhere across the world, instantaneously? Reliable. With an API. That's what I was looking for. And guess what, it's 2016 and Twitter has it working. And 300 million people use it,  it scales.

But they've limited the potential applications of this resource, only to allow it to run through software that they design so they can create a not so profitable ad business on it. 

But it seemed to me then and now that it could be much more than that.

I look at Twitter as a 1. User. 2. Developer. 3. Shareholder. 

1. As a user I miss that Living In The Future feeling I used to get with Twitter.
2. As a developer, I think they're within easy grasp of it, by just sharing the ability to create for this platform with developers who don't work for Twitter.
3. As a shareholder, I understand there's risk in this. It means Facebook can run software against Twitter's cloud. And so can developers who grow huge, remembering Instagram as an example. But, Twitter can also become a banker and distributor for these projects. That's what mature platform vendors always do. They don't try to force all the creativity through their own developer organization. 

It's like that scene in The Godfather where the families sit down with Don Corleone and insist that he share his senators and judges, for a fee of course. This is where we have that talk with Twitter. It's time to share the platform and we'll help you grow it. And we should become friends so you don't feel good about crushing us and we trust you so we'll continue to invest in the platform. This can be done, if you're human about it. 

For specifics see a post I wrote in August last year, Twitter NT.