I think we can have an 'Open Twitter' without anyone needing to fund it, or own it, or monetize it.

1 to Many short messages are a powerful concept, but as with email - a spec is all we need.

In a nutshell: we define a layer on top of email and mailing lists for short broadcast messages and discovery.

I jotted down my rambling, incoherent thoughts on the subject here: http://www.aschroder.com/2012/07/an-open-twitter-like-networ...