haha, i like the analogy with the whale.
But I don't think twitter is dependent on third party apps. I just feel that as an organization you can't necessarily think about and implement every single permutation of features that can be created with your data. Obviously it's your data and you reserve the right to release or not release it as you please.
Thanks for pointing out my erroneous assumption though. I just thought that if there are restrictions to what you can create and twitter obviously would keep adding new features to the product, it's not enough incentive for you as a developer to create twitter clients. But like you clearly pointed out, their most lucrative users might not really care about them. We agree to disagree
What other features might they create? Who knows? They're clearly going to bake in anything that makes sense for Twitter-the-business. That's a good thing, as far as I'm concerned.
I don't think you're right that Twitter is particularly dependent on third-party apps. I think we talk in a geek echo chamber that is particularly enthralled with apps, and with the best possible Twitter clients, but that most of Twitter's users --- and, in particular, Twitter's most lucrative users --- could give a flying whale about them. But they do need to share links and photos.