Twitter is about to become a much more robust platform for doing, well, whatever it is we do on Twitter every day. I usually call it "micro-blogging," but it's really so much more than that. It's my random thought register, a place where whatever notion is flitting through my mind—no matter how brief or unusual—is often delivered to an audience of 17,000 followers.

Most of the people I follow—meaning those that I actually pay attention to—use it in much the same way. Yes, there are the feeds, which deliver hard news headlines, but the beauty of Twitter is what lies in between the news reports. In any case, I keep track of all things Twitter related with TweetDeck, a desktop Twitter management utility I've been using since 2008.

For those unfamiliar with the Adobe Air-based app, TweetDeck, let me explain. TweetDeck lets you customize your Twitter world in an organized, columnar view, with unfiltered Tweets from those you follow in the first column, Tweets that mention you in the second column, and Direct or private-line Tweets to you in the third. You can add columns based on keywords, specific Twitter members, other accounts, etc. It builds in a lot of the other third-party functions/apps you might use, such as photo uploading to Twitpic, the bit.ly URL shortener, and even Tweet translation services. There are a ton of other features, too: It's a remarkably rich app.

All in all, TweetDeck is my one-stop desktop source for all things Twitter. I almost never visit the Twitter site. Its single-column view is way too linear for me, and I don't like Twitter's form of ReTweets, which don't let me edit before posting.

I'm not unaware, obviously, of all that Twitter's been doing to incorporate more powerful functions into its site. Twitter Lists, a feature that lets you organize or "group" people you follow or, are nifty. The new location-based service sounds great, though I'm not a huge fan of telling people where I am all the time. Some of the on-page pop-up information you can get for people on Twitter is pretty nice, too. I only see these things when I manage to exceed the Twitter API rate limit on TweetDeck and it stops showing new Tweets and letting me post any of my own. Then I grumpily march back over to Twitter.

Earlier this week, Twitter announced an ad platform, which company execs hope will help propel the rapidly growing social networking service into financial black. I have my doubts about the plan, which, oddly, will pull down underperforming ads. That sounds like a fundamental misunderstanding of how marketing and advertising traditionally work. I could be wrong; perhaps it will be a huge success because all of the Promoted Tweets will by hyper-contextual, super real-time, and a lot more than simple brand-building messages. We'll see.

However, this is just phase one in what is clearly a plan to reinvent Twitter. One of the company's chief investors, Fred Wilson, laid it all out in horrifyingly stark terms. Reading this post, I felt like I was sitting in the dentist's chair and he was bending over me, drill in hand, murmuring gently, "This won't hurt a bit."

In a nutshell, Wilson says that third-party companies like TweetDeck need to stop "filling holes" in Twitter and start building some innovation that leverage Twitter. Why? The new Twitter will probably act a lot like TweetDeck and offer heavy amounts of information, customization, and utility all in one page. Another article I read walks through all the third-party services likely headed to the scrap heap. As far as Wilson is concerned, this is all good.

He likens the scenario to the way desktop publishing saved the Mac in the 1980s. I liken it to Microsoft Windows 95 (and subsequent OS releases) killing the huge parts of the software and utility market in the mid-90s.

Back then, a vast army of third-party companies were all busy filling holes in the Windows platform. They extended memory, compressed disks, managed the health of your system, etc. This was big business. There were also lots and lots of productivity apps.

When Windows 95 came along, it incorporated many of these third-party utility functions inside the OS. Those companies tried to put on a brave face and said Microsoft's entrance simply validated the market. That was right before they went out of business. In the word processing market, it was a combination of Microsoft's partner connections, market strength, and product quality that did in virtually all of its competitors. Later, Microsoft would, inadvertently I hope, kill categories simply by upgrading the OS. When Windows XP arrived, my favorite Personal Information Manager was cooked. I had to switch to Outlook. Thousands of others did the same.

It's taken years for third-party companies to remerge in these categories, and most only make it by giving away their products.

Twitter is the new Microsoft in my analogy. Its plans will kill a lot of third-party products, and there is no guarantee that what Twitter will provide will be any better than what's already out there. Based on my official Twitter for Blackberry and ReTweet experiences, I think it could be worse. But Twitter has the power. All it needs to do is make a few subtle tweaks to the Twitter API and whichever third-party tool it wants to get rid of will stop working.

I don't know if there's anything I can do to stop Twitter, but I think the time is now to launch my "Save TweetDeck" campaign. Will you join me?

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