Is Twitter a Book Publishing Company?

“Is Twitter a book publishing company? I think it is. It is an open access publisher producing very short books.”

Such was the conclusion of Niels Peter Thomas, MD of Springer Fachmedien, during his wide-ranging overview of Germany’s €3.25 billion business and information sector yesterday at The Markets: Global Publishing Summit — an overview that emphasized the changing definition of what a publisher is, and what it does.