That doesn't even begin to handle the backwards compatibly argument. We still have people using browsers like IE6, so for a long period of time you would need to write code in both languages.
Beyond the hype, Twitter is significant because you can crawl their complete social network graph of millions of users. Delicious et al offers a similar crawling but they don't have the same user base, and facebook doesn't permit to do this.
Why it's important? from a business perspective you can quickly analyze the customer sector of companies: look at dell followers, compare it to the apple ones, what's the difference? (don't know if apple is on Twitter so take this as an example)
And this tells you what, exactly? How does knowing which social marketers, spam bots, and celebrities a nonrandom sampling of 50,000 technically inclined hipsters follow help me sell computers to them?
Really like the [obvious?] crunchpad product. I really expect a new generation of products cloning iPhones, Kindles because Microsoft, Motorola, Nokia are sleeping under its comfort zones. Cheers to ASUS too!
As an Argentinian I see a core point missing: evolving Corruption
In this crisis US can't differentiate between free market and corruption. Why S&P and other rating agencies gave AAA to AIG? it was really a miscalculation?
But to be realistic Argentina is infinite far from US. US has the opportunity to heal itself while Argentina future is very dark.
I think part of the argument here is that concentrating property rights into the hands of the few rather than the many, especially if the few control the government, makes corruption much more likely. International comparisons (mentioned in other comments in this thread) tend to show that countries with lots of private ownership of the means of production and minimal role of central government in operating the economy tend to have less corruption.
