It wasn't written for the janitor at Twitter, rather it was for people outside Twitter who want to think about what might be coming next. Yes, it is obvious. The idea was taken straight out of Facebook. I thought people would benefit from seeing what it would look like in action. As developers it's easy for us to imagine it, but even we need to mock things up to get a look at it, to help think better about it.

What made me giggle was:

> that doesn't force you to click a link to see the rest

(includes a link you click to see the rest)