Once you reach a certain level of ubiquitousness you can expect that the interests of the millions of people that are your customers and users, their interests trump yours. That is the danger of using a service like this in its infancy. There is not a large body of law that governs it so they will continue to push until they have taken everything they possibly can in exchange for what will be considered minor social features in the future.

For me this feels like breaking an unspoken agreement. It would similar to getting free hosting for a website in exchange for a banner ad, and then one day having them come along and double the size of the banner and munge up your content.

Unfortunately the logical solution, a mass migration away from a company that pulls this kind of stunt. We will likely just adapt because they have us by the balls.

Of course, maybe they just said they were going to do it to see if people went along with it. They will likely wait until a large enough percentage have converted before they ever pull a stunt like this.

Or not do it at all.

Side-scrolling is obviously not preferable, but it would be better than the whole layout breaking.