I find it very hard to believe that Twitter has interest in creating a decentralized service that they can't control content on or have sole ownership of advertising revenue.<p>I think they're just trying to be the trendsetters so they can have the most control of it when decentralized social networks take off.
I wouldn't put too many high hopes that Twitter will do this correctly.<p>> "Twitter could also potentially do more good by contributing resources to existing projects"<p>They could also potentially do more harm to existing protocols by coercing those and then dropping out when it doesn't suits them.
Twitter, as a company, has a horrible track record in supporting the developer community. This seems like a good project on its face, but ultimately (IMO) serves as a distraction. While the paper released today is worth reading and the people on the team are sure to have good motivations, I wouldn't get my hopes up on this.