I am glad that you like my commentary on the changes to the Twitter platform. Actually it does already affect each and every one of us regardless of whether we use Twitter.com, a twitter client, or web app. I believe it affects the decisions that Twitter makes and the new RT feature is one of them. The fact that RT’s that use the new RT feature do not show up in the clients and probably will not unless the client uses the web feature affects us all. This means the ability to easily see the reach of our tweets in the client of choice is diminished and we must check twitter’s own RT feature to see if we have been RT’d using this feature. It is a pain in the butt. If I am correct and this was done to facilitate their advertising model, we are all being affected by it.

I think they will use traditional ad models such as adwords etc in associated with search results but think the new model when revealed will be something that would be passed on through to the clients and web apps.

It is possible that Twitter could force the client to serve the adds but limiting API calls unless they comply. I hope it doesn’t come to this, but is altogether possible. I am concerned that all this disruption to the twitter ecosystem is a deterrent to developers and will affect their decisions to work in the platform. This too will affect us all. I also agree with your feelings that they believe their site (and service) is invincible (or irreplaceable) and yes it is comical, and Sad too!