Simplicity vs. consistency

Mike Isaac at All Things D in a convincing, but not exactly reassuring, analysis of where Twitter is heading:

The direction in which tweets are evolving is a deviation from Twitter’s modus operandi. The company has prided its service on its simplicity: Stripped-down, text-only messages. And, for years, Twitter has resisted doing anything that would complicate the simplistic appeal. For the company to give an about-face and turn toward media is a major sea change — and if Twitter can’t be as simple as it always has been, staying consistent is the next best sort of insurance.

I don’t mind consistency, but simplicity is the whole point of using Twitter. If they lose that, they have lost everything.