These types of lifestream sites that connect to your different social network accounts and alter ego's and then do that with everyone, and stream it all in one place.
Twitter is only going to get better. Why, you ask? Because as it exists now, it really sucks. Big Time. Again, why? Because it is a one way street! Everybody is talking, but nobody is responding. At least not where anyone can see and track. We don't need "lists" and all that crap- we just want to see somebody comment on our Tweets, on our Homepage!!
The best way I've found to use twitter (when I was addicted to it) was using third party software like TweetDeck. In the end though, you have a point, cause there's a lot of people talking, and not doing a lot of listening. Hell, there's a lot of robots talking on there too. I think though, that this mimics real life, cause people find it easier to talk than to really listen to someone. Twitter just makes that paradigm more noticeable cause of their interface. But you'll find with people who are real twitter users that there's quite a bit of conversation going on... you just have to find REAL people, lol!
I believe Twitter will be a long term player on the Internet. It has to be careful not to make the changes that Facebook seems intent on doing every month, but the guys at Twitter seem to have their heads screwed on and a few smart moves and they could be just as big as Facebook and even Google. Of course, the next big thing is always round the corner, so I could be totally wrong...
Yahoo! Meme seems to be a the next twitter, I wonder if it will work. My guess is in 2-3 years we'll see a new kind of media that will solve the problems that users have with twitter/facebook. Twitter right now has a serious spam problem, so I'm guessing the next thing would solve that, which means harder life for internet marketers.
Wouldn't that be just like going with a blog? I think twitter is going to be around for quite a while but I do get frustrated with the spammers and bots. nasty, pushy spammers always have to dive in and cause grief with the good stuff.
What's after Twitter? My only guess could actually be a site called Profilactic(search for it).. which have been there for a while however it's not really that popular but it has an idea that I like alot and I wish everyone would use it. Or another site similar to it.