I think your analysis of Twitter wanting to take a firmer control of the distribution channels is pretty spot on. I’m enormously disappointed to see the acquisition of Tweetdeck, as it’s my favourite client by a long way, precisely because of the control it gives me in the presentation layer, and I don’t think the acquisition bodes well for that in the future.

But my patterns of use of Twitter have changed, too. I wrote more about this but it was turning into a ramble which I should post elsewhere: I guess my Twitter network(s) have changed, particularly since the student protests in November, from a relatively small, mainly tech-/edu-focused community, to a rather more diverse one with which I interact in different ways.

Would I pay for Twitter? Well, I suppose it depends how things develop. But right now, my answer is “no”, because these recent changes feel like steps towards a more controlled, commercial model, and in the end that’s not something I want to give financial support to. So I’d probably end up with a combination of (i) and (iii) in your poll: maintaining some curtailed presence on Twitter as long as it continued to be useful/valuable while putting more effort into finding and using (and encouraging others to use) more open, and ideally decentralised, alternatives (which I might be prepared to support financially).