It certainly doesn't seem as promising a territory as it used to. Not so much because it's more dangerous as because Twitter hasn't turned out to be a "platform" in the same sense as say iOS has.

My how things have changed so quickly. I applied to YC for W10 with RFS3, got in, quickly abandoned the idea since the market didn't seem big enough, did something else (Notifo) on mobile platforms which seemed more promising, watched Twitter quickly destroy it's 3rd party ecosystem, decided never to build on top of Twitter again. All within about 18 months.

See @pg's answer here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2341567

There's actually a generally interesting question here:

When is an RFS considered "closed?"

I think there is still a lot of potential in twitter as a platform, specifically for the data they hold. There is a lot of information shared on twitter which previously didn't exist on the internet. It would be shared by people chatting to each other, maybe msning colleagues or emailing links to friends etc. That information suddenly being available is what I think is interesting, and still worthwhile building on.

Back in the day, building a twitter client may have seemed reasonable but ultimately turned out to to be 'snatching coins from in front of a steamroller'. I think if you're building something which is a replacement or improvement on the twitter browser UI you're clearly taking a risk. I don't know that other uses of the data they hold are such a risk. Obviously I could be wrong but for me it's at least on the opposite end of the risk spectrum from twitter clients.

[disclosure, my current side project uses twitter data. It's in my profile if you want a look]

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Twitter is more a part of a distribution strategy than a platform to build an entire business off of http://t.co/r6wdLpMc $ZNGA $FB

Pardon my ignorance, but what is RFS short for?

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What are your thoughts as to OStatus?

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dalton, is this your fake account?