There's a few things you're incorrect about.

1. Twitter being open: users have the ability to mark their tweets "private" so only the people they follow can see them. Yes, there are ways around it, but the option is there. If marked private, a user's tweets do not appear on the public timeline.

2. Facebook content: with the amount of data on Facebook, it would be a large change of direction to allow open access to all. I personally like my information to be semi-private, and many others do as well. I think you'd see a large decline in both quantity and quality of content if Facebook opened up profiles for anyone to see. Users have the ability to make their profile wide-open if they please, but if you remember the recent issues with their Beacon Advertising program and Terms of Service changes, the revolt becomes loud when they make any attempt to make individual user data available.

This was an interesting article because what you are suggesting would be pretty difficult for Facebook to do. I don't particularly care for Twitter and not many people I know even know of it but in terms of sharing links and getting a quick point across, I would utilize Twitter more than Facebook for those purposes. The fact that if you have accounts with both and the fact that the status boxes are linked to me is quite enough. Opening up Facebook even more, to me, would not make sense. But do I understand your point about the constraints and limitations that Twitter has but it seems to be working pretty well considering its following, even with those limitations.

@Andrew - In the original version of my article I included a very small blip about the privacy setting on twitter, but let's be serious, the number of users who have their twitter feed protected is probably less than 1% of their 25million users.

In regards to giving open access to all the data, I was referring to really granting open access to all of the specific portions of data that initially headlined that section. What I mean is, some data doesn't make much sense to give open access to like photos, for example. The comparative value of that data versus better indexible content isn't worth the battle it would start with users.

I would also say that the issue with the beacon advertising program (which I would hardly call recently, given how fast the net moves and that it was something in 07, if I recall correctly) was an issue of intrusion more than openness. The two are different. Facebook has just within the week made mini-feed activity open.

@Matt Elliott -
Great thoughts to include. I feel you skipped an important point, and perhaps I didn't clarify it well enough:
The sole reason that twitter's API /is/ such a great success is /because/ everyone (minus a negligible portion of users who have protected feeds, as twitter calls them) has their feeds public by default.

If that data weren't already public, the API couldn't exist to the successful capacity it has. Case in point- Facebook as they move to accomplish similar. The Seesmic Desktop App is a great example of that exact case in point.

You're correct on Twitter's 3rd party support in terms of off site usage versus on site, which is part of their struggle with a monetization strategy, as you mentioned).

RE #3: To break it down into two components. When the strategy for a business is user generated content, more content = better, because you have a larger inventory to pull from. Facebook and Twitter's strategy is user activity logs and UGC. If you're model isn't directly UGC, however, then you're correct.

To elaborate:

YouTube is UGC operated (with 100million viewers a month). That's their business, although they're trying to get more into the premium quality content business as well. In their case, more content = better. Hulu, however, has a business model based on premium production content - this is not a UGC model (obviously) and in their case, more content does not = better /unless/ the increase in content is of high caliber, or begins to adopt the longtail (where Hulu primarily operated in the "big hit" area).

Now, does YouTube battle to make sure that the videos that /are/ great content are easy to find? Yes. And that's exactly why they have all the achievements, the rating systems, and so forth. Because, as you say, the value of the content /is/ very important. But YT greatly increases their probability of having that content by having more content.

I hope I didn't drift too far from your point there, or if you feel like I still didn't address it, please feel free to bring it around again (I love the discussion).

I would absolutely agree that Facebook is currently suffering from a lack of vision. I don't know if I would chalk up Facebook's approach quite so much to "do it all" since their developers control part of that "all" that Facebook does. I'd say their biggest mistake was not providing a way for App providers to bill users (since Apple launched the same type of platform for the iPhone, is seeing much greater success, which also allows the iPhone to be custom tailored to users). That's a different conversation, however.

Facebook does have a killer event system, statistically, though, Facebook is the most popular photo sharing site online.

Awesome thoughts to discuss, Matt! (I'll get to other comments later in the day)

@Nathan - wow. The Beacon issue was in 2007, wasn't it. Time flies. But my general point was in-line with what KateNonymous said. They're different tools that serve a different purpose. The recent brush-up over the new FB design was that it was too "busy", aka too Twitter-like.