This is a common statement that benefits from explicit context: Twitter's innovation specifically was importing the "asymmetric follow" into a social network, a graph in which nodes represent individual people and in which relations are generally public.
You mean a link? ;)
With regards to your other points, I do think the general premise of the post is correct that the pendulum is swinging back (?) towards more flexible data structures (e.g. graphs).
The writing does come across as though the author just had an epiphany ... hey... these things are all graphs...
Yeah, and so are lots of other things.
Yes, it was painful to read and I missed the whole point of the post unless it is just listing of where we find and use "graphs." I think this is a post out of his comfirt zone; I like his VC and startup posts better.
And is it just me, or is it painful to read this? It has the feel of a student taking an intro course on optimization, then exclaiming, "everything is an optimization problem!" I mean, sure, this is true, but it's tautological and feels forced to me.
And sorry, but Twitter's main innovation was discarding symmetry? People have been subscribing (an asymmetric relation) to things on the internet and otherwise for ages.