> For my money I think Twitter is more dependent on third parties than third parties are on Twitter. Not just Instagram, but the entire ecosystem of apps that grew up around Twitter in the bygone days of warm fuzzies.

Really? I mean, in the current scenario? The first-party Twitter apps on mobile devices are pretty strong, enough that I don't even use TweetBot even though I paid for it. And while Instagram was nice, I don't think I used Twitter to view Instagram...in fact, I'm pretty happy with Twitter just being used to share links, with which I click through.

The value of Twitter is that its network effect is such that "everyone" (at least most people in media and tech) are on it. They may have gotten on their through third-party apps, but now Twitter has done an adequate job on their own apps and it'll be awhile before the Twitter network will ever migrate to some other place (and where to, Google+?)