Far be it from me to disagree with John Battelle, but I think there’s a missing component from his prediction that Twitter will begin to more fervently get into the creation of original content all its own this year.

There’s a lot that I agree with in Battelle’s thinking. But ultimately I don’t think Twitter itself will create much original media itself – though there will be certain instances when doing so makes sense – as much as it will increasingly accommodate the big companies that want to do so and have it be served up to Twitter’s audience.

Twitter has already created destinations for big events like NASCAR that don’t require much on Twitter’s own part other than a shiny wrapper. So extrapolate this out and imagine a system where the organizers of any big event – let’s use the upcoming Oscars as an example – can come in and pay for access to a tool that lets them skin a page that displays the official Academy Twitter feed, updates from key media partners, curated updates using the official hashtag and more.

This kind of turnkey solution would be very attractive to the broadcast networks, movie studios, record labels and other media companies who want to present an official version of the conversation around a TV show, movie, record or anything else.

Some companies have already been doing this on their own sites or through services like Storify (which Twitter would be wise to purchase if they really want to go down this road) but by having this kind of thing live on Twitter it solves the discovery question. Specifically it takes the conversation and allows Twitter to serve it up as a recommendation to people that keeps people on their site for the social conversation. Couple this with the idea that it could then be advertised to people’s whose profiles suggest they would be interested in such a conversation and Twitter is making even more money while presenting what is and should be relevant the reader.

There’s an important point that’s made in this story about book buying and the problem facing discovery as more book stores go out of business:

As bookstores go away, “we need more powerful book reviewers online,” said Matthew Baldacci, VP and associate publisher at St. Martin’s, in a panel on discovery. He was referring not to professional reviewers for outlets like the New York Times but citizen reviewers with a role similar to “the role that booksellers used to take…if we’re forced into a situation where physical bookstores are going away, then we have to have these people who are help us sell our books.”

So what’s needed is a recommendation engine whether it’s human or automated.

This is a problem that’s faced by all industries, from books to movies to mobile apps. Right now there are more and more systems in place that are designed to surface what an algorithm thinks we will like. Sometimes that’s based on aggregate data, sometimes that’s based on the purchasing behavior of our social network friends. But these systems are imperfect and don’t get to the fundamental need to know what someone whose opinions we trust thinks of something we’re considering buying.

This is a role that in the book world has been played, in part, by book store employees. Theater and video store staff could recommend interesting and offbeat movies to customers who frequently visited. And so on and so forth.

The move to online purchasing has certainly made finding things more convenient. But these systems are very bad at surfacing the odd and unusual, something that humans excel at.

All I can say is this new Star Wars action figure featuring Luke Skywalker in his X-Wing pilot uniform from the first movie is absolutely fantastic. It’s just ridiculously perfect.