Where have all the birdies gone?

Fail whale jokes aside. Twitter needs to get its act together.

Somehow a buggy, little web application has become the favorite locale for Internet aficionados worldwide. At first it was cute--the fail whale carried off by the Twitter birdies, over capacity, bringing back that beat. But this irritatingly simple application as achieved a sort of market penetration that most companies would lie, cheat and steal for--Twitter has users that create applications to make it better, that evangelize and convert the nonbelievers.

Aside from an answer to the money question, Twitter has everything a budding social media enterprise could want: primarily, a loyal fan base. There are other options, albeit more complicated or less hip to the birdie branding, but Jaiku and Pownce are there, waiting for the opportunity to seize market share. So Twitter, please tell me why you're making it so easy?

Every time a Twitter fan's handle gets shut down (happened to me, @tibbon and others last weekend), every time a person's followers spontaneously disappear (reported two or three weeks ago), the Twitterati start to wonder how long it would take to rebuild their network of people elsewhere.

Don't you see Twitter? You're the platform of choice for the conversation, but we'll do what we please with the relationships.