Like the insights and mostly agree.<p>I think you missed an interesting point, though:<p>Can Twitter (or Facebook, or anyone else for that matter) still build the next big thing internally? Are these companies still as 'startup' as they think they are, or are they now too slow and bureaucratic to come up with products unrelated to their own core functionality?<p>A follow question: should they even come up with the new cool thing, or should they focus on their core offerings and simply buy break out successes when they are apparent?<p>In my opinion, both FB and Twitter are overestimating their chances here, like any incumbent always does (see Christensen). The questions "what if Google does this" is dismissed by every founder, because obviously Google is too focused on its core mission to make the success of a new social app the forefront of its development efforts.<p>Both companies are focusing more and more on being platforms for others, rather than building and testing all new paradigms themselves. This is what being the incumbent allows you to do, taking much larger risks, with larger payoffs. Launching a lot of small apps with cool ideas certainly shouldn't be their core business when they need to figure out how to deal with their growing developer ecosystem (again, something both companies are struggling with).<p>Acting on fear, which both companies did with their recent apps, certainly isn't the right strategy. But maybe I'm wrong and Twitter and Facebook are the only companies that can escape the innovator's dilemma?<p>BTW - Google is doing fine on that front with self driving cars and rockets, despite their not so apparent track record in social.