It's worth considering the value of IP to a business like twitter. Fundamentally the mechanics of twitter are exceedingly simple - especially when you consider

It's worth considering the value of IP to a business like twitter. Fundamentally the mechanics of twitter are exceedingly simple - especially when you consider the complexity of apps like Facebook and Google+. They key difference between Twitter and a would-be competitor is scale (and that's why the actual mechanics are not simple at all), but you don't get to that scale on the strength of technology alone. More importantly, once you're at that scale you become exceedingly hard to dethrone, for primarily non-technical reasons. That is why Twitter can afford to be extremely generous when it comes to releasing IP. Of course they don't have either, so thanks Twitter!