I read once that the surest way to identify an engineer driven company was to look for user elements that work like data structures. Between the @'s, the #'s, a

I read once that the surest way to identify an engineer driven company was to look for user elements that work like data structures. Between the @'s, the #'s, and the other various syntactical quirks, Twitter sure seems to fit that description well. On the other hand, however, I'm not sure that's only a bad thing. The barrier to entry is present but not insurmountable, and it gives the "Twitterati" a clubby sort of feel. Everyone wants to feel special - back when Facebook was invite only, people would claw and clamor for invites. There's a balance in there, and it seems like Twitter's gotten close. Not perfect, but close.