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I think there is a qualitative difference between a company officially supporting an open standard, vs the availability of third party tools that translate from whatever the company chooses to produce to the open standard.

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I would go one step further and say that, especially for twitter, I prefer the 3rd party methods. If you depend on twitter to provide the RSS feed then when they withdraw it you're screwed. But if you're already using a non-TOS-compliant workaround, twitter has to go out of their way to break it and when they do people who care enough will find another way to get the content they want. Information wants to be free.

Would it be better if Twitter produced RSS feeds? Yes.

In the meantime, don't let the best be the enemy of the good.

The best is also the enemy of the worst. I basically have no use for twitter minus an RSS feed. Why would I bother trying a 3rd part application when twitter pulled the rug out from under me?

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