In any event, I think we're going to have a fundamental disagreement on the scope and use of Twitter i.e. you believe it's constrained to headlines and pthiness, whereas I see it as a full fledged publishing platform.

The fun part is that we get to both get to see who's right

As promised …

1) I think, purely from an advertising and marketing perspective, that online media was able to supplant print media because of declining readership from the papers. Advertisers, the spine of the old media, decided to invest their money elsewhere.

I'm convinced if this did not happen, much (but not all) online media outlets would struggle for relevancy among mainstream Americans.

That said, I follow the shift workers and not the digerati, so I know I am in the minority on this one.

2) I always thought blogs were designed with the intention of being monetized. The second (the royal) we figured out we could publish and design, we searched for ways to cash in. Just think about banner advertising in its heyday, those things were everywhere, even on the smallest sites and blogs. The flexibility of the design lent blogs to be monetized as fast as they were created.

3) There is a contradiction in my argument. Essentially, Twitter (as far as the designers were concerned) was not designed to do anything beyond answering the question of “What are you doing?” I could be way off on this, but that's my impression.

The usage of Twitter in replacing blogs, I think, is limited to headlines and pithy comments. You're right in that it is open, but much of the innovation on Twitter has been user generated. Look at services like Mr. Tweet, Twitpics, Tweetlater, and Magpie. Twitter itself (as far as I know) does not participate in the creation of those services, so that lends me to think the service was simply designed for one thing, and we are grafting parts on to it. There's nothing wrong with that … except for advertising … and that's for now.

One thing I didn't touch on: When you follow a brand, and the brand converses back with you, that can be effective as a method of advertising through Twitter. In that case, people are choosing to follow the brand, whereas with Magpie the advertisement is thrust upon you.

That said, I'll just point out a several quick things that struck me:

1) You did not mention online media's role in the decline of newspapers/print media and print ad sales. Is it your view that online media had no role here?

2) You state that Twitter was not “designed to be anything” and yet you attempt to strictly define it as a place for “headlines” and “conversations” at a few different points. My view is that Twitter is a wonderfully open and flexible platform that helped to create a platform for conversations, link sharing, *and* a nascent publishing form called microblogging.

3) You also state that Twitter “is not designed for monetization.” Is it your view that blogs were not originally designed for monetization as well?

My overall opinion is that microblogging is brand new and flexible to many different kinds of uses (including monetization) just as blogging was in a similar position just a few short years ago. And newish platforms like TwitWall (which allows comments to be tied to Twitter comments) and FriendFeed are bending and playing with the “rules” as we know them evermore.

It's interesting times as I always like to say — and glad to engage you in this debate on OMC Brandon!