Twitter and Summize

I found this update on the Twitter Status blog this morning interesting:

“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?