It's fairly obvious to me that an open system, that incorporates Twitter-like functionality as a subset of a greater whole, could take over this space in less than 12 months, leaving Twitter/Facebook/* as AOL-like also rans. Winer appears to have functional solutions for many of the parts needed to deploy this ecosystem. What is missing is a spark of genius to fire people's imagination, such that they flock to the new tool(s) with an eagerness not seen since early days of the www when Mosaic hinted at what could be done. I can't believe that all that is missing is a healthy dose of Mad Men marketing. Maybe that is the missing ingredient?