Twitter is becoming more like Tumblr in its pursuit of in-line media. Vine is only the most recent example.
The developer angle, from the story:
"The combination of the building out of the platform and Twitter's pushing away of third-party developers has the company somewhat at a crossroads. In order to serve each type of user best, Twitter has to give users more ways to filter their timelines (i.e., all tweets by people I follow with video, or all tweets with video and a given hashtag.) But experimenting with these kinds of "client" features is what the dis-invited third-party developers do best. Perhaps there is a middle ground where developers can write "plug-ins" to allow users to transform their experience within Twitter, the most popular of which Twitter would buy and fold into the main product."
The developer angle, from the story: "The combination of the building out of the platform and Twitter's pushing away of third-party developers has the company somewhat at a crossroads. In order to serve each type of user best, Twitter has to give users more ways to filter their timelines (i.e., all tweets by people I follow with video, or all tweets with video and a given hashtag.) But experimenting with these kinds of "client" features is what the dis-invited third-party developers do best. Perhaps there is a middle ground where developers can write "plug-ins" to allow users to transform their experience within Twitter, the most popular of which Twitter would buy and fold into the main product."