Twitter: Is There Room For Anyone Else?

By Rob Diana of Regular Geek (Twitter/FriendFeed)


Recently, a question was raised to bloggers, should we shut up about Twitter? Eric Berlin responded with a simple no. He then goes on to list several reasons why Twitter may even go mainstream. Twitter actually going mainstream will be a big story as it is something different than the typical social network. However, Twitter is not the only game in town. Microblogging is quickly becoming a crowded field, even with the closing of competitor Pownce. Twitter is growing rapidly and none of the competition is anywhere close. What does the competition look like?

Twitter Alternatives
Pownce was probably the largest alternative, but they are no longer. So, what comes next? Below is a graph from Compete.com with 5 leading competitors, Jaiku, Identi.ca, Plurk, Kwippy and Yammer. Jaiku is the oldest of the group and is currently a Google property. However, since the middle of last year their traffic has trended down.


The general traffic trends in the graph above are very similar to what Alexa shows as well. Identi.ca had a big burst of traffic at their launch, but that traffic came down fairly quickly. It may be increasing again, but itis tough to tell. Kwippy had a nice boost during the summer, but their traffic has tapered off as well. TC50 darling Yammer is also trending downward, but they are the newest of the bunch and hoping to gain traction in corporate environments. The surprising statistic is the amount of traffic for Plurk. They have not lost a significant amount of traffic after gaining traffic while Twitter was having problems last May. They are also one of the few sites that is not "pure microblogging". What I mean is that they are not a Twitter clone with a different style and name. They have a different feature set and the timeline is a different way to view information. Mona Nomura stated that they have different demographics, even calling Plurk "the MySpace of Twitter". Assuming that the different demographics allow Plurk to continue to grow, what about the other alternatives? Is there room for more than just Twitter?

In its most basic form, Twitter will own the space unless Facebook status updates become more open. If this is true, then Twitter will share the masses with Facebook. Plurk would probably continue on, but its growth would likely be limited. The other question is whether there really is much more growth for microblogging.

Custom Communities and Niche Networks
I am a big believer in niche communities and networks. People gathering together with similar interests can quickly form a passionate community. Jesse Stay agrees with this sentiment and feels that niche microblogging networks will start to appear based on free and open platforms like Laconi.ca. This could become a very popular destination for a niche community. It is the equivalent of the forums and bulletin boards of past years, but with a new spin. These niche networks can also provide a way for people to find a community of "experts" for a specific topic.

On the custom community side, Yammer has a decent idea with trying to get into the corporate world. However, I think that their business model gets corporate people concerned. However, there are microblogging products that can be installed within the corporate firewall, like Laconi.ca or other commerical alternatives, in order to promote microblogging without the public consumption concerns. This could even be true for other communities like a large blog. If a blog has enough readers, they could build a community around the blog using a standalone microblogging product. It could easily sit behind some sort of registration or even become a premium feature for some sites if positioned correctly.

So, to answer my original question, is there room for more than Twitter? In the form of basic microblogging, there is little room, especially if Facebook pushes its status updates. However, if there are other features added, like what Plurk has done, the application could gain some adoption. There is likely plenty of room in the niche and custom communities precisely because Twitter is purely public. Is there some application that was missed that could gain significant marketshare?

Read more by Rob Diana at RegularGeek.com.

OpenMicroblogger Monetizes With Introduction of OpenAppStore

By Jesse Stay of Stay N' Alive (Twitter/FriendFeed)

One thing that seems to have been ignored a lot lately is the presence of Open Source microblogging tools which corporations and organizations can adopt to build community for their brand. The most popular of those is Laconi.ca, the code behind the once-popular Identi.ca. The "other" Open Source Microblogging tool, OpenMicroblogger, which I have covered here before, is making strides however, and just the other day launched its' own "App Store" for installing applications on OpenMicroblogger-powered sites.

OpenMicroblogger may have just pioneered a new space, termed, "micro-apps", in which very small apps can easily enhance the capabilities of a user's microblogging experience right on top of the microblogging service itself. OpenMicroblogger's app store has started with its own photo wall application which users can add to their profiles, along with a "post-to-identi.ca" application example, and "post-to-twitter" application example. The magical thing about it all however is that because OpenMicroblogger supports Wordpress plugins, any Wordpress developer can ideally write an app easily, and make money off of it in the store. In fact, the "post-to-twitter" application was written as simply a wrapper around Alex King's own Twitter Tools Wordpress plugin.

In a time of economic uncertainty, it would appear that at least one Microblogging tool has come up with an ideal way to monetize microblogging. Build a platform, already familiar to developers, that makes those developers money. Developers then come to your platform, build apps for it, and encourage others to use it as well. OpenMicroblogger is quickly proving itself to be one of the easiest to adopt platforms out there. And in its infancy having recently hit 1,000 downloads, it would appear that I am not alone in that opinion.

It's important to note that while there is a proof-of-concept platform out there at openmicroblogger.com, OpenMicroblogger is open source software, not a service. Any site that implements OpenMicroblogger for themselves can utilize these applications for their users. Therefore, if a developer writes an application for the OpenAppStore, it becomes available to all OpenMicroblogger implementations. Developers can sign up at OpenAppStore.com to add their app to the store and set a price.

This is just the beginning of a very interesting future for open source microblogging. While it may never be a competitor to Twitter, open source, as it always has, will always pose a threat, and perhaps, ironically, Open Source may have beat Twitter to the punch at monetization.

Read more by Jesse Stay at Stay N' Alive.

Posty MicroUpdate App Adds Support for DMs, Favorites, Retweets

For the last few months, I've been using Posty to deliver updates to Twitter and Identi.ca simultaneously. While TweetDeck thus far has a more robust interface and more options, the fact I can update multiple networks at the same time has been keeping me using Posty. Today, Cesare Rocchi posted version 1.6 of the application, which adds some critical functions that had me going back to the Twitter Web site - namely direct messages, and for some, retweeting.

Posty supports the ability to microblog to Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, Tumblr, FriendFeed and Identi.a simultaneously, much like Ping.fm. In the Adobe AIR app, you write your message on the right, select the networks you want to hit, and Posty submits them in parallel.

While I tend to use Posty simply for submitting, you can also catch up on your friends' timeline or the public timeline of each service, giving you a small window into the world of what's going on at Twitter, FriendFeed and the rest.

As Cesare lays out in a blog post today, the newest version adds support for direct messages for both Twitter and Identi.ca, support for favorites in both Twitter and Identi.ca, support for retweeting, and integrated URL shortening, using the http://is.gd engine.


I can DM directly from Posty now.
The application is still small in stature, and lacks some of the UI customizations seen in TweetDeck for example, but when it comes to usability, Posty just does its job well, and I'll keep using it, at least until TweetDeck integrates Identi.ca or FriendFeed, which would make things a lot more interesting.

You can download Posty here.

TweetDeck Update Offers UI Customization, New Features

In July, TweetDeck debuted as a new Adobe AIR app aiming to simplify your Twitter experience - offering live Twitter streams, grouping, and integrated search, all in one window. In the ensuing three months, TweetDeck has grown to incorporate services like 12seconds.tv, and has become a must-use application for many of the digerati, including Guy Kawasaki, who swore by it during his keynote at the recent BlogWorld Expo.

Today, Iain Dodsworth rolled out an update to the service with some much-requested features, including the ability to alter the application's look and feel, an improved user interface, support for new URL shorteniing services, part of the never-ending battle to be verbose within 140 characters or less, and additional security, as calls to Twitter are now made using HTTPS.


TweetDeck Shows Tweets, Groups, Replies, Search and DMs in One Window
The new update allows you pretty much all the functionality you get from Twitter's Web site from within TweetDeck, including marking and unmarking individual tweets as favorites, and adding the ability to follow or unfollow other users. Combined with TweetDeck's integrated search capability, the pair would set you up to follow a group of users who are focused on topics you're interested in.


You can see Tweets and Replies flow by in their own columns
And should you want to avoid being overloaded by seeing all the tweets from your friends scrolling by, you can even "turn off twitter updates", letting you use the tool as a desktop Twitter search application or a TwitScoop client. (See the full release notes here)

So far, I've trended toward using Posty, as it puts my updates on both Twitter and Identica, but when it comes to strictly Twitter, TweetDeck's UI and feature set puts the others to shame. You can get TweetDeck yourself at http://www.tweetdeck.com/beta/.

Identi.ca Users See Service as Choosing Cause Over Community

With Twitter having largely overcome its many issues that made it a long, hot summer for the leading microblogging service, traffic to smaller competitors has stalled, if not decreased, across the board, at Plurk, Rejaw and Identi.ca, which leverages the open source Laconi.ca microblogging software. But a hard core group of users clings to Identi.ca's mission as an open, developer-friendly alternative to Twitter, with many using both services in parallel. Yesterday, I asked the Identi.ca community to spell out why they were using the service. Some of their responses are below.

Candrews echoed many of those on Identi.ca around the frame of freedom, saying:

"I'm here for the Freedom. I want my data to be mine, to be able to leave when I chose, hack as I wish, and share all I want."

The issues of "freedom" and "openness" were cited much more than anything about community, which is what I would have expected to get if I polled Twitter.

Csarven wrote, similarly:

"Universality of the Web. For the collective good, information should be accessible to all."

John Metta wrote:

"Initially, I focused on Identi.ca because I've been an Open Source Software programmer for nearly 15 years. I appreciate the possibilities of an open, federated system- specifically when it comes to extending that system to work natively with other applications. For those applications to use Twitter, they would have to work around the closed nature of the system."

Jesse Stay, a frequent blogger here, and staunch Identi.ca supporter, wrote, "identi.ca is more of a cause than a community. We're all here to see that more open features are included in micro-service SW. OpenMicroblogging services like this are more about building a horizontal platform of meshed microblogs that all interoperate."

You can see that message echoed through the dozens of responses I received:

Metajack:

"I use #identica because I believe in the cause. Open trumps walled gardens every time."

danyork:

"I use Identi.ca mostly because I believe in the promise of a distributed, open source microblogging service and I want to see it."

hochmann:

"like others, I use #identica because it uses open technologies, and it's open like good net technology always is."

From what I could tell, most of the Identi.ca users hadn't flat-out abandoned Twitter, but instead, added Identica to their outlets. In fact, a good number of the responses I gained on Identi.ca also hit my replies tab in Twitter. This is due, in part, to Identica's enabling you to cross-post to Twitter from the site, but also due to the rise of products that let you post in multiple places at once, including Posty, which I use to hit Twitter and Identica in parallel myself.

As services start to cross-populate, more savvy users are even using Identica as a tool to reach people in a new way. Tibor Holoda of Slovakia wrote to say he planned to use it as his "native language (non-english) channel" that hooked into FriendFeed. As he wrote me, "It's easy for my english-speaking followers to just hide my identi.ca tweets and see everything else i'm posting," adding, "I'm trying to persuade and evangelize the use of microblogging in our country, as its not very common among folks in here yet (just a handful of geeks is using it as of now)."

Metta added, "In the long-term, as better bridges develop allowing more seamless cross-posting and aggregation, I really feel as though Identi.ca federation can excel, and am using the system as a fundamental building block to my next business endeavor's design both in anticipation and in support of that."

Twitter is winning the public microblogging battle because of its large installed base, and its built-up community that has largely forgiven them after months of trials. While the Identi.ca user community isn't the largest today, it is one that clearly believes in its underlying foundation of open source, friendliness with developers, and the hope that through open source and extensibility, that it can make inroads outside of the niche which is using it now, but possibly, be adopted in the enterprise. If you are a big fan of identi.ca, you can of course find me there, at http://identi.ca/louisgray.

OpenMicroBlogger Shows Steady Growth in First Month

By Jesse Stay of Stay N' Alive (Identi.ca/FriendFeed)

Last August, on Stay N' Alive, I wrote about a lesser-known open source microblogging tool called OpenMicroblogger. OpenMicroblogger has shown steady growth since my post, and I really think it could be a strong alternative to Laconi.ca in the terms of OpenSource, self-hosted Microblogging solutions.

The Stats

In just one month (August), in raw-traffic alone, it appears, according to Compete.com, that Laconi.ca has taken a sharp drop of almost 50% of their traffic (from near 30k visitors down to near 15k). At the same time, OpenMicroblogger.org, the location to download the OpenMicroblogger code, has seen a sharp increase, from near 0 visitors, to near 2,000 in just a month. While these numbers aren't huge, they show that OpenMicroblogger is quickly becoming a strong alternative, and justly so, to Laconi.ca. According to them, OpenMicroblogger has had near 1,000 downloads in just August alone, with little to no press or exposure.


Compete.com shows Laconi.ca's big drop in traffic month over month.
The working example of the OpenMicroblogger code-base, OpenMicroblogger.com (emphasis on the ".com"), has also shown impressive results in just the one month since launch. Identi.ca has seen an even sharper decline in traffic according to compete.com, losing near 53% of it's traffic, from over 140 thousand visitors down to just over 60 thousand visitors in just the last month. Twit Army, the Leo Laporte founded, laconi.ca-backed implementation, has remained quite steady, but saw a very slight increase since the last month. Leo's site went from near 40,000 to near 50,000 in the last month. Since it only recently started, that too is impressive, but it will be interesting to see if Leo can keep the momentum going. While not near the Identi.ca or Twit Army numbers (yet), OpenMicroblogger.com has gone from near 0 users to almost 2,500 users in just a month, and doesn't seem to be losing momentum - browing the public timeline shows steady, current, and regular use of the service. The recently announced Yammer, a closed, yet internal solution for organizations, has not published any statistics - I see these OpenSource alternatives as a serious competitor against the Laconi.ca and OpenMicroblogger code-base.

OpenMicroblogger as a Platform

The code for OpenMicroblogger is completely Open Source, and supports the OpenMicroblogging (OMB - Emphasis on the "ing") protocol, meaning the software can actually communicate with other OMB-supported software such as Laconi.ca (the software that powers the Twitter-competitor, Identi.ca). This basically means you can subscribe to anyone on an OMB-supported site such as Identi.ca or Twit Army (both Laconi.ca instances), while at the same time users from those sites can subscribe to you as a user of OpenMicroblogger - the horizontal structure of such a large network of "mini-microblogging networks" can be profound. Twitter does not support this, nor does FriendFeed, or even Facebook (but there's nothing stopping them).


Identi.ca similarly has dropped since its initial spike.
What's unique about OpenMicroblogger however is that it hits a mainstream audience of developers that would be implementing the software a little better than Laconi.ca. The code behind OpenMicroblogger understands much of the Wordpress API for plugins and themes, so many Wordpress developers can easily extend the software with little more knowledge than they already have about Wordpress development. In fact, OpenMicroblogger.com, the official working instance of the code runs on the Automattic-written Prologue theme with little to no enhancements.

OpenMicroblogger.com Working Instance

Brian Hendrickson, the developer behind OpenMicroblogger, as mentioned earlier has actually provided a working instance of the OpenMicroblogger code at OpenMicroblogger.com. As I mentioned, it shows continual, current usage, and even has some very interesting features that Identi.ca and even Twitter don't provide. Beyond simple Microblogging capabilities and OMB support, it appears you can also provide links, upload photos, and most impressive, provide tags with your posts. Each Tagged entry gets added in a list of posted tags on the right of OpenMicroblogger.com with the number of posts under that tag allowing you to see the most popular topics and categories of the time.

I have talked before about the power of having meta-tagging with Microblogging services such as Twitter or Identi.ca. Instead of poluting your existing 140 characters with hashtags, you should be able to post them via your client of choice alongside the message so they can easily be categorized. OpenMicroblogger.com actually seems to be the first service to provide this. The only additionaly thing they could add is ability to tag actual users within a post and it would hit what I was talking about exactly.

While still in its infancy having only been around for a month or two, it appears that OpenMicroblogger is becoming a serious contender in the OpenMicroblogging space. Having talked to their developer and knowing a bit about the future of OpenMicroblogger (which I will disclose later when some new features are launched), there is even much more to come. I'll look forward to trying to use the service, and look forward to other organizations trying to implement this innovative software.

Read more by Jesse Stay at Stay N' Alive.

As Twitter Regains Footing, Competitors' Growth Stalls

Over the last few months, Twitter's challenges have been well documented, here and elsewhere. Between issues with uptime, occasional data loss, a reduced feature set, and a difficult relationship with its developer community, the microblogging service frustrated many users to the point they were seeking out alternatives - from Plurk, to Identi.ca, Rejaw and FriendFeed. But more recently, as the service has all but eliminated downtime, and put the "Fail Whale" on the Endangered Species list (See: Pingdom's Twitter analysis), it looks like competitive services are losing momentum, and some are bleeding visitors, if Web visit tracker statistics are to be believed.


Twitter.com's Growth Has Returned, According to Compete.com
According to Compete.com, Twitter saw more than 2.6 million visitors in the month of August, a 500% increase over its December 2007 number, representing a 17.7% increase month over month. The high level of growth since June for Twitter followed a two-month near plateau from April to June, when the service's struggles were at their peak.


Compete.com Shows Twitter's Competitors Have Stalled
In the same time period, from July to August:

• Identi.ca fell more than 58%, to 61 thousand visitors, down from more than 140 thousand the prior month.
• Plurk.com fell to less than 250 thousand visitors, down 7.5% month over month, and down 30 percent from the site's peak, in June.
• FriendFeed.com visits were flat from July to August, decreasing just under 1 percent, to more than 500 thousand visitors.

(All data from Compete.com)


Compete.com Velocity Shows Twitter Extending Its Lead
I can't claim I was an extremely "early" adopter of Twitter, and at times, I haven't been too fond of the service compared to other sites, but when it comes to status updates and "what you are doing", there really is only one game in town, one that's synonymous with the concept of microblogging - Twitter, thanks to it being first on the scene, first to amass a significant user base, and being tied in to other services, like Facebook and FriendFeed.. When Twitter had months of instability, outages, and a reduced feature set, its users didn't make the mass migration to other services that many had expected. And while they're still wrapping their arms around a business model, as services like Yammer claim to have gotten to the financial promised land first, Twitter has got the brand recognition and the massive user base that no other service can claim.

On Saturday, I wrote to Chris Baskind on FriendFeed, regarding Twitter.

"We have huge expectations and therefore, huge frustrations. The site has so much potential, and realistically, they have already won the microblogging battle, so we want them to be great!"

Twitter has the potential to be the conduit for the SMS and text messaging generation to social media. Twitter has already proven to be a great option for news updates, alerts to emergencies, and for using keywords to gauge the temperature of tens of thousands at once. And for anybody looking to the smaller services like Plurk, Rejaw, or Identi.ca, even if those services have incrementally better features or a stronger UI, they would have to expect a smaller user base, becoming an increasingly quiet echo chamber.

Barring disaster or bankruptcy, Twitter's leadership should continue. I've seen increasing examples of late where the site has become more mainstream. Those looking to alternative microblogging services may have had the time to hit at Twitter's weaknesses pass them by, as the site has nearly eliminated downtime, and started again on the growth curve, when others have stalled or seen user traffic decimated.

The Following/Listening Ratio - Are Your Followers Actually Listening?

By Jesse Stay of Stay N' Alive (Identi.ca/FriendFeed)



Let's face it. One of the main reasons you and I, and almost anyone, are on social services is that you want to interact with new people and expand your current network of connections. There's no doubt about it that there's power in this concept - as you grow your network with quality people, you will meet others that could potentially help grow your brand, share your product, or build your audience. A large audience is valuable.

In the early days of Social Networking (hmm...that would be what, 1 year ago?), growing your network and having the majority of those following you also listening to you was very easy to achieve. It was simple - if you followed someone, you were making a commitment to also listen to their updates. I'm seeing a trend amongst my followers, however, which I think is changing the effectiveness of this technique. Where just one year ago, I was usually one of among 20 or 30 people my followers were following, quite a large part of my followers today are following 200 people or more.

I'm noticing on the larger networks like Twitter that the conversation is starting to fizzle. I may post something, but I don't always get the responses I used to. My followers are simply following more people now and I'm one of hundreds they have to pay attention to. I don't take offense to this - on Twitter I too follow over 1,200 people. I have my own strategy for listening to the most important posts using track and RSS and other techniques, but I'll be first to admit I don't catch every single update like I used to. Twitter has now become an aggregation and information tool for me for learning about people and events - it has lost much of its "conversation" nature that it used to have. This is the case for many other people, and not just the big bloggers and early-adopters any more.

The Follower/Listening Ratio

This begs the question, at what time does a social service lose its effectiveness in building relationships through communication, and at what time does it become purely a "data gathering and sharing" tool? Ideally, if all your social services, networks, and tools had the perfect ratio enabling all who follow you actually listen to you, your potential for a successful network of followers/following would be much more effective. This is the problem when social services like Twitter get too big - they foster the lack of good relationships the bigger they get, especially if they don't build the tools to foster this. Limiting the number of people you can follow doesn't necessary solve the issue though, as there is still power in also being able to aggregate and track information about lots of people.

I'm currently posting most of my updates via Identi.ca. They will have this problem as well if they grow too big, but one solution for me is to ensure I'm always on the new, upcoming networks so that the number of those people listening to me are following remains small, and more people are paying attention to my updates that way. Not everyone can do this though, and I'll admit this isn't the ideal situation and will not last for long.

Sites That Do it Right

There are a few sites that seem to be doing this right (to an extent), and frankly, I'm seeing much better communication and relationships fostered via those services vs. the other services like Twitter that seem to be getting bigger without the proper tools to foster such relationships. Two of those stand out with some great features to foster this ratio and keep it strong that I'd like to share.

Facebook

Facebook, the big monolith that hit 100,000,000 users today, seems to have grown well with tools to enable users to foster their relationships. Facebook is supposed to be about people, after all. First of all, Facebook allows categorization of friends into "lists" which you can arrange privacy settings around and allows for easy sending of mail to groups of people. Setting privacy settings allows each user to ensure only certain groups can see certain pieces of information about them. This helps reduce the unneeded information your followers see, and ensures they only see the most important information that they would be interested in about you.

In addition to that, with the new Facebook design, you can now filter out what you want to see about people. So, if I no longer want to see information about Joe I can hide that in my news feed and his updates will never appear again. I'm still friends with Joe, I can still contact him and interact with him, but this way I'm truly paying attention to those I'm truly interested in. In addition to that I can do things such as filter so I only see photos, or only updates from a certain application. My capability to listen is better on Facebook, and the ratio I mention is much better. The discussions are better and happen more often on Facebook because of this.

FriendFeed

FriendFeed has some similar filtering functions to Facebook. Let's start with the current features, and the ability the FriendFeed gives you to "hide" updates by a particular individual. If you don't want to see updates by someone, just "hide" their updates and only the updates from those you're interested in will show.

Yesterday, FriendFeed also announced some brand new features that make building and fostering relationships and discussion much better. For instance, I can add particular individuals to a "favorites" list. This means I can now follow all the updates of my favorite "followees" and just skim the rest. This ensures that more people are listening to what they want, and not ignoring the things they might not want to ignore.

With these tools, Facebook and FriendFeed become much more effective tools for growing and fostering your network. It's important that as you grow your network that you ensure that not only are you building the network, but that those following you are actually listening to you. Choosing the right network and strategy to do this is important. Having 1,000 followers on Twitter may not be the best thing for you if not all of them have a way to pay attention to your updates. Pick the networks (and the two I mention aren't the only ones - they are just the two I use) that work best for you at fostering conversation and relationships, and it may just be okay to ignore the others, or at least focus a little less on them as you build your relationships through the more effective methods.

What are some better ways you would recommend to strengthen the followers/listeners ratio of your network?

Identi.ca and the Power of Microbranded Communities

By Jesse Stay of Stay N' Alive (Identi.ca/FriendFeed)

Identi.ca, the open source and Federated microblogging platform, could very well put Twitter out of business as other businesses begin realizing how they can adopt it. I think the answer could very well be in the "group Twitter" concept that everyone keeps talking about and the fact that Laconi.ca, the code that powers Identi.ca, makes this very easy for anyone to do.

I realized this today when Jay Ridgeway was able to show how to set up a simple Federated instance of Laconi.ca in just 7 steps. The idea behind "Federation" is that I can sign up for Identi.ca, or any other Laconi.ca-based platform and be able to follow anyone on any of the other Laconi.ca-based platforms all on my prefered service of choice. Today I began imagining how others could begin utilizing this technology - essentially it is a technology built to allow other similar systems built on the same technology to talk with each other.

Sound familiar? Laconi.ca is building an actual Protocol underneath it all where other types of software can also communicate with Laconi.ca. This would put it almost in the same realm as Sendmail, which communicates with other mail server software via the SMTP protocol, or even Apache, which communicate with other web servers via the HTTP protocol, or even Bind, which communicates with other DNS servers via the DNS protocol. I could go on and on - Evan Prodromou, the founder of Identi.ca, is not just building another microblogging service. He's developing a standard, along with software that adopts that standard so that you, too can build software that communicates with that standard! This is profound, and in my opinion we haven't seen such innovation and selfless development of new communication techniques since the invention of the web itself. Identi.ca is in many ways building an entirely new, open layer of the internet.

Federated Communities

Now, back to the groups concept. Well, actually, it's more of a small community concept I'm refering to - your business can actually build communities off of this protocol, starting with the software that Identi.ca has provided. Identi.ca and Twitter are both very broad communities. People of all types and tastes are on those services. Those services are good for that - it's a great way to build relationships, meet new people, and find information. However, there is no way currently for me to associate only with those of like tastes and culture. For instance, if I am into college football and you are not, you aren't going to be interested in the details of the games I'm watching. You may be interested though to know I have an interest in college football. So both types of communities have their place.

Now, what if ESPN were to launch a version of Laconi.ca just for sports lovers? It would just take a simple install of Laconi.ca and a little cobranding of their logo, look, and feel and soon an entire community of sports lovers would be sharing their love for sports, communicating back and forth, and showing their other sports-loving friends what they're doing in their sports-loving life. At the same time, they could still follow all of those same friends they follow over on Identi.ca and even other interest communities, all while still on the ESPN sports community, remaining on the ESPN site. Imagine if this same technique was launched for Moms, Dads, religions, or even just your local city or town?

Laconi.ca is not a service, but rather a technology, and the founder and developer, Evan, of Identi.ca I think recognizes that. We're seeing this as so many other microblogging services have come up recently, some others even open source. Identi.ca will evolve as it builds around this basic technology of microblogging and finds new ways to use it. What's great is that they're sharing the basic technology so that others can do the same and build their own creative services around the technology! (Evan was quoted as saying one of his monetization strategies is consulting on the technology he's written, so there's no doubt he expects to see others embrace it, as it's to his benefit) Add to that the shared API built around the service and the fact that any software written for Identi.ca will work on almost any other Laconi.ca platform with just the change of a host name and you can quickly see the power of Identi.ca and the software that powers it.

Twitter seems to be completely ignoring this as they shut the doors on developers, try to develop entirely in-house, and build an entirely proprietary system. Businesses will quickly realize this, build software on the Laconi.ca platform, and as the customers and communities that follow those communities flock to their platforms, they will also naturally join other supported services such as identi.ca. Users will soon have no reason to be on Twitter any more if nothing is done. I always said developers would begin the demise of Twitter, and Laconi.ca's making it awfully easy for that to happen. Unless Twitter adopts and opens up in a major way, they will fail.

In case this convinces you to switch, you can find me on identi.ca at http://identi.ca/jessestay. Join Louis at http://identi.ca/louisgray. Looking for tips on how to switch? Check out http://ohidentica.com/.

Can Microblogs Just Talk To Each Other?

Guest Post By Rob Diana of Regular Geek (Twitter/FriendFeed)

Twitter has had a bad few days. After a few weeks of wonderful stability, we started to see some Fail Whales. Then people started losing followers and subscriptions. Because of this, even more people are moving to alternative micro-blogging services like Identi.ca. Of course there have been several requests for a Twitter friend importer. I think people are getting caught up in the problem and not thinking about the best solution. Previously, I mentioned that Twitter was at the crossroads. In that post I started thinking about a possible solution:

It is now late May and they are just admitting that they have infrastructure problems. Obviously, there are the redundancy and replication issues that can be solved with known techniques. The realtime API needs to be using a replicated database and not affect the main database. This is the part that is concerning me the most as it should have been obvious some time ago.

Another post appeared from Dave Winer where he mentioned that we are inching toward federation.

Right now, today I'm using an approximation to the ideal system. I try to enter my original post on FriendFeed, then I have an agent script running on one of my machines that routes it to Twitter and Identi.ca, with a pointer to the discussion thread on FriendFeed, shortened by bit.ly.

Obviously, this is not a good solution to the Twitter problem either. There are also multi-posting services like Ping.fm and Posty which allow a user to update each of their micro-blogging services with the same message. So, with one click you can update Twitter, Identi.ca, Pownce, Jaiku and Plurk. While that sounds really cool, they only provide one-way updates. Tools like Twhirl are starting to allow posting and retrieving of tweets and dents in one application. This gets a little better, but you still have multiple accounts to deal with.

Federated Microblogging

Federation is the real answer. What does federation do and why is it different from Twitter creating a distributed architecture? A distributed architecture means you have various pieces of the application sitting on different servers. Typically, several parts are replicated or redundant and there are various load balancing devices thrown in to complete the architecture. I am not going to go into tons of detail as books have been written about distributed architectures.

Federation is different from distributed in one simple sense. Federation requires a full copy of the entire system. Federation is the cooperation between various systems to act as one. Wikipedia has a good description of a federated database system.

A federated database system is a type of meta-database management system (DBMS) which transparently integrates multiple autonomous database systems into a single federated database. The constituent databases are interconnected via a computer network, and may be geographically decentralized. Since the constituent database systems remain autonomous, a federated database system is a contrastable alternative to the (sometimes daunting) task of merging together several disparate databases.

If you replace all of the database and database system terminology with microblogging and microblogging system you will understand a federated system. So, how does this help Twitter? It does not, at least not directly. By having a federated system, people can move to Identi.ca or the next clone that appears and not lose their followers. If you think about the concepts of email, you will understand how the federated system would work. My account in the federated system would be robdiana@identi.ca. A Twitter user could reply from within Twitter directly to me (robdiana@identi.ca) and I would receive it in whatever client application I had. I could also follow Twitter users, Pownce users or any other microblogging user. By enabling people to communicate across platforms would mean that the server load would be spread across various services, thus decreasing the amount of traffic on Twitter directly.

The one part of the federation that is missing is the routing between servers. This can be accomplished by following the DNS model. A local DNS server has a reference to its parent or master server. This allows new servers to be built and their location and IP address propagated to other servers. This is a very effective solution and it has worked for several years.

Because Twitter and Identi.ca follow the same API, they could act as the root servers in the system. The other option to the Twitter API is the XMPP protocol, which Twitter is using for their realtime API. The protocol choice is important because a federated system requires that all of the systems speak the same language. A federated system would also require a different client application than we have now. As I mentioned earlier, Twhirl fully supports Identi.ca and Twitter. However you are dealing with two different accounts. How cool would it be if you had one microblogging client to chat with people on any service?

Twitter Finding New and More Creative Ways to Fail

Just when you thought it was safe to Tweet again, Twitter ran into yet another database problem, which not only resulted in sporadic "Fail Whale" sightings, but dramatically impacted the roster of those following one's updates, as well as those each of us were subscribed to. The latest snafu comes at a time when the growing number of microblogging addicts are seeking alternatives, moving to FriendFeed, Plurk, and increasingly, Identi.ca.

According to a post on the Twitter Status blog, the issue first showed a reduced number of followers on the service, and later, in order to solve the issue, Twitter went into a maintenance mode, warning of lower counts across the board. Amusingly, they claimed that some of the lower counts could be due to the removal of spammers, but in my experience, it's been more than 9 hours since the problem was first identified, and I've seen the number of people I'm following drastically cut, from more than 1,500, down to "only" 672, less than half.


On Monday, when I said "The Talk About Rules for Social Following Is Getting Out of Hand", I had taken a screenshot of my current Twitter ratio, at 1,534 to 1,441, after having worked for a good part of the previous week with Twitter Karma to get my ratio synchronized. Just a few days later, that data is carved to 672 and 1,236, prompting some to try and refollow me, and even more to flock to identi.ca.

Twitter's gotten a lot of abuse on this blog in the past few weeks, as we've gone over issues with developers, uptime and changes to the API, but every time I think they've captured the market on a single route to failure, they find another way.

The team's employees are talking a good game about getting this resolved, but seriously, Twitter, why should we believe you now?

See also:

Why Does Everything Suck: The Nightmare Twitter Scenario May Be Upon Us
Profy: So You Thought Nothing Could Be Worse Than Fail Whale? Now Get Your Followers Back

Identi.ca Launches SMS Support, Sort Of.

Guest Post By Jesse Stay of Stay N' Alive (Twitter/FriendFeed)

It seems, amongst all the identi.ca, Twhirl and Posty hoopla, today we seemed to have missed one important feature -- that identi.ca, at some point recently, launched SMS notifications via their settings interface.

Currently, if you log into identi.ca, then click on settings in the header, you'll notice a new tab in your settings called "SMS". If you click on the SMS tab it allows you to set up your cell phone among various carriers and notifications will be sent to you if you opt to do so.


The service doesn't seem to have full SMS support yet though, as they are apparently utilizing SMS via e-mail which according to my own sources in the industry, isn't the most reliable method of sending SMS. I tried it out, and while it seemed to work well by sending all my friends' updates to my cell phone (there is no ability yet that I'm aware to turn off notifications for individuals via SMS, which is a major problem), the messages I received were unorganized and hard to read.

Each one was also sent from a different number, making it hard to keep all the messages in one place. It also seems that you can't post messages back to identi.ca from your cell phone, another must have if it is going to be a true competitor with Twitter or Jaiku. You can see how bad it got after 10 messages or so on my iPhone.

Having SMS available as an option on identi.ca is a nice, and very welcome, addition. This shows they are truly in the game and have strong potential to be a mobile status and communication tool like Twitter. For me, I like to use SMS with Twitter to filter out the posts of the thousand or so I follow into a small segment I can pay attention to. SMS also enables me to easily message others via one interface, and post statuses from wherever I am located. Knowing this is on its way with identi.ca, along with Monday's launch of both Twhirl and Posty integration, makes them a strong consideration for me to begin using much more often now. However, I still think they have a long way to go before they fully match Twitter's feature-set and can compete head-on.

I'm excited to see where this all ends up. You can find me actively using identi.ca at http://identi.ca/jessestay. Louis can similarly be found at http://identi.ca/louisgray.

Posty's Single-Window Microblogging AIR App Adds Identi.ca Support

Adobe's AIR platform is seeing a rise in applications designed to bring Web activity to your desktop. From TweetDeck to Twhirl, Alert Thingy to Feedalizer, a host of new apps have debuted in the last few months, offering the ability to view or post to one or more services including Twitter, FriendFeed, Seesmic, Pownce, Jaiku and lately, Plurk or Identi.ca.

But not every AIR app gets all services, and those that support more than one service usually require more than one window to get the job done. A newer entrant to this space, Posty, authored by Cesare Rocchi, offers support, as of today, for six different Web update services, all in a single window, allowing those with accounts in multiple places to send simultaneous updates to more than one location.

Posty, from a single black square window, lets you post updates to six different services, including Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, Tumblr, Friendfeed, and as of this morning, Identi.ca. And if you have logins at more than one of them, you can simply use the checkboxes to make sure your updates go to multiple destinations at once.

While the application is rather spartan in its ability to be configured, it simply gets the job done. At the top is a horizontal bar featuring each of the six individual services, a posting window, and a settings window, where you can add your login information.

Key to making the application useful is that for each service, be it Twitter, Identi.ca or FriendFeed, for example, you can view your own entries, entries from your friends, the public feed, see replies, or you can use integrated search.

As with other AIR apps, you can take appropriate actions per service. For FriendFeed, you can like or make comments. On Identi.ca, you can reply or go directly to the update. And on Twitter, you can reply, mark as a favorite, or open the note in your Web browser. This wasn't always available, as in the very first release of Posty earlier this month, you couldn't see your friends' updates, only your own and public timelines. After I traded e-mail with Cesare a couple weeks ago, he was quick to respond with a new version incorporating the update.

Unlike more well-known AIR applications, like Twhirl (which Sarah Perez of ReadWriteWeb called a "killer app" today) Posty handles all these services in a single window, utilizing the icons. Instead of monopolizing screen space with multiple parallel windows, Posty takes an all in one strategy.

When I first reviewed TweetDeck, some people said they were "tired of black" when it came to AIR applications, so if you're not a big fan of black, Posty isn't really for you, as that's how it looks, period. There are options to change the text color from "Sunny" to "Snowy", "Icy" and in between, but it doesn't actually change the app.

Cosmetics aside, Posty has given us a strong single-window application to both consume and send updates to multiple microblogging services at once. Identi.ca is rising now, and gaining momentum thanks to Twitter's occasional issues, and its open source roots. With services like Posty making it an equal player early on, the new kid on the block gets another boost.

To download Posty for yourself, find it here: http://tinyurl.com/getposty.

Throttled By the Twitter API? Try Something New.

Guest Post By Rob Diana of Regular Geek (Twitter/FriendFeed)

Well, the microblogging API space sure got interesting in a hurry.

First, on Thursday, Louis Gray reported that Twitter was throttling unauthenticated API requests. This obviously would effect several applications in a very bad way. Later in the day, Dave Winer let everyone know that Identi.ca has implemented the Twitter API. And on Friday, in a surprising move, TechCrunch announced that Twitter is sending the XMPP firehose to new middle man Gnip.

So, what does this mean to you? Well, that is a good question. First, we know what the Twitter API looks like. Identi.ca replicating the API is good for interoperability as well. Yes, they copied the main Twitter API, but have yet to include the searching capabilities that Summize supplies. However, they do have RSS feeds for any search query which does suffice for basic searching. The other big players in the microblogging space, Jaiku and Pownce, also have APIs. But, what do they have to offer?

Jaiku's API contains the usual suspects, the public feed, a user's feed and a user's profile. It also allows for "presence" updates which is helpful for allowing applications like Ping.fm to post to multiple services. It also provides a method to get a user's current "presence", their last item in the "presence" stream and as well as a specific item in the "presence" stream.

Pownce's API is similar as well. There is a public "note" list, a user's note list (which can be filtered for replies, private messages and other coolness) and a user's profile. You can also retrieve a specific note, with replies included optionally, and the list of recipients for the note. For social graph fans, you can get the friends (mutual relationship) of a user, fans of the user and who the user is a fan of. For posting notes, there is the normal post method as well as separate post link, event, file and reply methods.

Interestingly, there is a method to determine the list of users a post can go to. There are some other minor goodies like feeds for the public list and a user as well as simple web post integration. Obviously, this is an API designed with developers in mind. They thought of several different ways to use the application and provided APIs accordingly. The only problem that I could see is that there is no search supported. Hopefully a third party service like Gnip will fill that void, like Summize did for Twitter.

Now that looks like a good foundation, but there are some fundamental problems. It is not obvious that Pownce and Jaiku support something like an XMPP feed, so, there may not be the ability to have the full public stream at all times. This type of thing is critical for interoperability. There is also inconsistent support for threaded messages and other post types (like the Pownce event and file posts). Why haven't we seen a real multi-microblog client? Ping.fm is doing multi-writes, but does not support multi-reads. In the instant messaging world, where the XMPP standard comes from, we do have multi-chat clients and few actually support XMPP! We are starting to see some standardization in this space as well with Identi.ca copying the Twitter API as well. If we consider the Twitter API a defacto standard and we have the XMPP standard for real time transfer, there should be little stopping developers from creating the ultimate micro-blogging client.

Now, the question is, are you willing to wait or do you want to crown someone king?