“The replies tab remains disabled today as we rework some of the queries that were causing problems yesterday. This has also been reflected in the sidebar of the status blog for the web features.
One way you can see replies directed to you is to search on Summize. You can search for “to:username” to see all updates directed at you.”

Twitter now encourages us to use third-party services, for functionalities they cannot deliver themselves anymore.

I know they have partnered with Summize before, for instance during Steve Job’s recent keynote (you can read about it here), to reduce their database load.

But this time they are outsourcing a basic functionality of their own system, which makes me wonder what is left of what Twitter once was?

By now, realizing that IM and Track will still be offline a while, all I wish for is an API that allows 70 req/hour again. I feel like half-a-person without the tweets trickling into Twitterrific/Growl.

Twitter have one of the most open APIs around, and I also think this was part of their recent headaches. (getting crushed by API calls)
We all gave our Twitter credentials to any third-party app that came along and looked interesting. We had a zillion different Twitter clients, Twitter search, Twitter karma services and we wanted to try it all out.

A while ago I listened to the Gillmor Gang discussing Twitter once again.
We all know Steve’s “obsession” with Track, so part of the conversation somehow got lost, and I haven’t been able to stop reflecting about this part ever since.

Chris Messina brought this up while discussing OAuth:

” So, you don’t actually have specific control to say, “I want to turn off access from Twitterific.”… You know, it’s like Flickr provides a great model of how you can turn on and off access from different services. This is just an example of one of the things that if we had it, I think Twitter would not only be providing greater value, but it would be demonstrating a level of user control over the use of this system that would actually be, I think, leading to greater resilience.”

I don’t know why this model haven’t been discussed.
I can only speak for myself, but in light of the recent problems, I would happily turn off Twitter access to at all the different services and clients I have tried out in the last months. I don’t even know myself anymore how many apps and services receive my tweets.

Implementing a flickr-like model, where you can see which third-party applications you are using and remove the permission for these if necessary, would be fantastic.
As a user it is a great way to control where your credentials go and it wouldn’t hurt Twitter’s API either.