Friend @bitfaker wrote an entry at haochen.wordpress.com regarding the release of identi.ca. This micro-blogging solution claims to be an open source (so one day a decentralized or federation Identi.ca) status tool, aka twitter linux aka twitter torrent. The general idea is; hack it, mod it, tweak it, and see what happens. For more on this project check out Identi.ca, Not Perfect, But Good Enough, friendfeed.com/rooms/identica and catch this author at identi.ca/czar.
Image via Wikipedia
Identi.ca is similar to existing microblogging sites such as
Twitter, Jaiku, or Pownce. Unlike those services, Identi.ca’s
underlying software is available under an Open Source license.
Identi.ca is also the first service to support OpenMicroBlogging,
a standard for exchanging short messages between microblogging sites.
Identi.ca also makes public user data available under a Creative
Commons license in standard formats. [controlezvous.ca]“Too many existing social networks keep users locked in to their
services,” says Evan Prodromou, president of Control Yourself. “With an
Open Source code base, and support for standard data exchange formats,
we are giving users back the autonomy to control their own social Web
presence.”"In today’s world, time is a luxury you don’t have. Release your product too early, it’s featureless or users don’t understand it, they won’t come back. Release too late, and someone else has surely beat you to the punch. Being a web developer, I understand that it’s okay to release something that is not perfect. You want to release something that is just good enough. Good enough to give users a reason to join and come back. You want to be agile, transparent, and open. Let the users know when the next release is and what to expect. Iterate quickly, fixing those bugs and adding more key features as you build up your core user base. Speed is key. That is the ingenuity of Web 2.0." [haochen.wordpress.com]
Features:
- SMS updates and notifications
- A Twitter-compatible API
- More AJAX-y interface
- Maps
- Cross-post to Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku, etc.
- Pull messages from Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku, etc.
- Facebook integration
- Hashtags
- Image, video, audio notices
- Automatic url-shortening
- Multilingual interface (using Gettext)
- [sarahintampa.com]
Getting Laconica up and running: "Since I'd like to see you run a Laconica site (or something like it) for mine to talk to, I figured I'd document how I got the thing running. My server is running Ubuntu Gutsy, so your mileage may vary. This is a long one, so check out the how-to after the jump..." [decafbad.com]
@stpeter writes, "I’ll be curious to see how that approach scales, because IMHO there will be an awful lot of HTTP GET requests and 200 OK responses involved. Instead of having 10 or 20 or 100 subscribers send in a polling request every 10 minutes (or less!) to see if I’ve generated a new post, it strikes me as much more efficient to push out a notification only when I’ve posted. [...] But the most important thing is that, no matter which technologies are used, I think we’re seeing the emergence of a standardized, federated, open microblogosphere, which is just super." [stpeter.im/?p=2224]
"However, Identi.ca gets a big “FAIL” for its launch for a few very important reasons.[...] There are very obvious and defined features that must be included in a microcontent site at launch.
I’m not saying an entire roadmap needs to be worked out. No, get a
working beta up and get testers in there. However, without replies,
without reliable “offline” access (i.e. IM, SMS or client integration)
I’m not going to stick around. Finally, direct messages would be a nice
feature." [technosailor.com]
