Good GigaOM post by Matthew Ingram.

The point has become clear by now: anyone who is still under the impression that Twitter is the friendly, touchy-feely company that co-founder Evan Williams used to run — the one that admitted it “screwed up” relations with developers by moving too quickly — is living in a dream world. Twitter CEO Dick Costolo may have been a standup comedian at one point, but he is a businessman now, and Twitter is determined to do whatever it takes to come up with a business model to justify the huge valuations it is getting.

As MG Siegler has pointed out, what Twitter is doing is just business and not personal — but there is a reason that most businesses don’t operate the way the Mob does (other than the fact that killing people is illegal, of course). Acting that way, by routinely kneecapping people or setting their businesses on fire, is a risky proposition. Even if you *can* do it, it’s not clear that you *should* do it, especially if some of your business depends on goodwill (as opposed to fear), as Twitter’s clearly does, and especially if a large part of your success is due to that larger ecosystem.

Another pertinent view by Ryan Paul here.