So what can Twitter do to win back the people who have played such a large role in its success? Twitter should reduce the restrictions on the creation and running of bots.

There are still several rich areas for experimentation in the Twitter ecosystem but perhaps the most fertile is in the area of allowing automated replies to tweets. There is so much latent demand being expressed on Twitter and up to now there has been no easy way to interact with this demand.

So how can Twitter open up the floodgates while keeping a lid on potential spam and other problems that come along with allowing bots to operate more freely? Obviously we need a framework within which these bots could operate.

Here are some simple guidelines for such a framework:

1. Bots should be clearly identified as bots. I'm proposing the introduction of a second type of Twitter account that developers can use specifically for this purpose.

2. People should have the ability to opt out of seeing bot replies and they should have tools to mark bots as spam.

3. People should have the ability to mark helpful bot replies as helpful.

4. The replies from bots that receive a high number of helpful replies should be ranked higher than other bots.

I'd love to have a conversation with anyone who wants to more fully explore this idea.