When AOL first entered the market, you could only send E-Mail to other AOL users. Eventually, faced with the potential of users leaving their platform for more interoperable (if less full-featured) alternatives, AOL relented and made their email system a proper, standards-based utility.<p>Now, granted that scenario is not a great example as email existed as a standard long before AOL came into existence, but I do think that as the number of users on Facebook&#x2F;Twitter reach their inevitable peak, those companies, too, will be faced with the need to open the gates on their walled garden.<p>It&#x27;s interesting that, thus far, both companies have delayed such a situation from arising by buying-out the other platforms people have been moving too (Instagram, Vine, etc.) and incorporating them ever-more-tightly with the parent platform. At some point, though, I think (hope?) this strategy will prove untenable and open interoperability will once again rule the web.<p>Call it crazy speculation, but I could foresee a resurgence of RSS&#x2F;Atom eventually doing to Facebook&#x2F;Twitter what SMTP&#x2F;POP&#x2F;IMAP did to AOL. If you think about it, the only thing that RSS&#x2F;Atom was ever missing from becoming what Facebook&#x2F;Twitter are today is a central aggregation point in the cloud. A smart startup that pulls a user&#x27;s Facebook&#x2F;Twitter feeds and mixes in any other RSS&#x2F;Atom, as well as allowing users to post back to Facebook&#x2F;Twitter&#x2F;Atom could potentially spell the death of proprietary timelines.