The way I see it, the NYT or any other media who allow this to happen without receiving direct compensation are doing so for the sole purpose of branding. They are virally increasing their awareness while using a free service by a third party to do so. Intellectual property? Yes, there is an opportunity for people to share news without crediting the media source it came from, but many people simply retweet or quote the tweet, both of which maintain the media’s Twitter ID. It does definitely inhibit their ability to measure site clicks, direct shares and other forms of feedback, but in the end, isn’t it mega-brand-spreading the main goal? Media companies should be glad this feature now exists because those who are short on time and aren’t able to peruse entire websites can now see a story published by a credible media giant, and will in turn contribute to that giant’s bottom line (over time) by spreading the word that this is an organization that I trust (therefore I will tell my friends to trust it and look to it for information as well).

That’s not quite true. The feature, Twitter Cards, is meta-data added to the website the Tweet links too. Therefore any 3rd party Twitter client can extract the same meta-data Twitter.com/Twitter iOS/etc. can.

And while it is not valid Open Graph it is close enough as does not matter for practical implementation.

No question about it: Twitter should be sharing revenue with the publishers.

We’re actually building this product at YourSports. Message me (@chrisamccoy) for details.