People in HackerNews tend to ignore things that have no 'funding', 'VC', 'capital', 'investment', 'startup' or related terminology.
In this very same thread people are mentioning that an open, distributed system is needed or that they'Will contribute by code and kind'.
And identi.ca is not even mentioned in the article.
Disclaimer: Im not trying to be offensive through other posters. They may simply not know about identi.ca. But that proves my point even more. Twitter and app.net have been discussed so much in the past few weeks. Identi.ca barely got any attention.
If app.net can get the press it has gotten it probably means that the marketplace has reached boiling point. I'm thinking developers and many twitter users are ready for a more reliable and trust-able system.
XMPP is probably the best approach. I'm currently investigating this path myself. The disparate set of alternative protocols that app.net is considering are the same ones that diaspora* used. The result is a server that speaks several overlapping protocols.
In order to be successful, what this space really needs is a de facto server, like Sendmail, but one that's easy to set up and configure. Over time, this would make it possible to have a critical mass of compatible servers that speak the same set of XEP extensions. There are many open source XMPP servers. I think one reason this hasn't happened already is that most of them are difficult to set up and configure.
Does XMPP allow you to follow a person and see all their public messages as they're posted? Does it allow you to see historic posts for a user? Can you search the network for all messages with a given tag, and get a live stream of updates? Can you see trending tags?
It would be relatively easy to build a Twitter service on top of email. Participating email providers would give every email account its own listserv account. Followers would be subscribed to the list. Tweet emails would have only a 144-character subject, no body (plus any multimedia attachments). You could still use your email normally, but also access the full Twitter functionality with a special client via the web, phone, or computer. Anyone with a normal email account could follow you, though they would have to have an account with a participating email provider in order to tweet or retweet. If a couple of the big players implemented it, the service would have critical mass overnight.
A 501c3 twitter is almost a brilliant solution. What grantmaker wouldn't want to support an organization dedicated to people's speech and open journalism? Valuing extensibility, openness, and free access, the mission is strong and the market is there. If Caldwell wanted to move this way, and offer $50 sustaining memberships for new features and $100 memberships for developers, nobody would blame him and all of a sudden he's open to some amazing funding opportunities.
from http://www.thimbl.net/
"Thimbl, the free, open source, distributed micro-blogging platform. If you're weary of corporations hi-jacking your updates to make money, or if being locked in to one micro-blogging platform tires you — well, then Thimbl is for you!"
The similarity is only superficial, in that we draw upon similarities with web2.0 platforms in how we communicate our use-case.
Diaspora, Crabgrass, NoseRub, StatusNet, identi.ca and the rest are just web-apps with some sort of federation bolted-on. None of them are truly distributed multi-tier systems like the classic internet applications such as email, usenet, irc, or finger. Thimbl, on the other hand, is just a finger & SSH client that illustrates that "microblogging" has already been possible on the internet for decades. It's done by simply presenting the data differently and making it look like the now-familiar Twitter interface. You don't need anything from the Thimbl project running on your server to participate in Thimbl, just the software that is already in your repository - namely SSH and xinetd/finger or compatible alternatives."
We need something along the lines of Diaspora (Open and Distributed). This would encourage geeks to develop on the platform due to it being distributed it would be hard/impossible to shutdown thus shall be around for ever (Twitter might not be). And due to the openness of the codebase etc people would start setting up hosts (Just like Wordpress or Diaspora etc.)
The number of people that care about why Diaspora exists and why a Twitter clone in the same vein would exist is extremely small. Small userbase means the service is basically dead on arrival.
I wonder how hard it would be to add a stalking function to an IRC server, so you can follow someone and see all their public messages; and then log messages so recent chat can be viewed by looking at a channel... are there any other reasons to use twitter over IRC? :P
"How can one commercial company be allowed to own a protocol such as http or email?"
Twitter's "protocol" is not a protocol but an API that runs on top of HTTP and they created it. The ONLY responsibility Twitter has as a corporation is to do whatever it takes to make the largest profit. If it failed at this, it would actually be in violation of the law as that is the purpose of a corporation.
The world isn't entitled to anything Twitter builds.
You're missing the point amidst your rage. The author means protocol as an abstract mechanism, not a specific implementation. Email is not a specific protocol either - I can receive email using JSON over HTTP - but a abstract mechanism that is implemented by a collection of those.
And that's not Twitter irresponsibility; its responsibility is to do whatever its owners want it to, following the law. Especially since it's a private company, not a public one.
The world isn't entitled to anything Twitter builds.
Nobody says it is. The article is saying that Twitter is not entitled to be the sole mechanism for distributing Twit-like messages, and that we should build and use a different one.
[+] [-] e-dard|13 years ago|reply
http://identi.ca/
The issue is getting people to start using such a service.
[+] [-] emilsedgh|13 years ago|reply
In this very same thread people are mentioning that an open, distributed system is needed or that they'Will contribute by code and kind'.
And identi.ca is not even mentioned in the article.
Disclaimer: Im not trying to be offensive through other posters. They may simply not know about identi.ca. But that proves my point even more. Twitter and app.net have been discussed so much in the past few weeks. Identi.ca barely got any attention.
[+] [-] riffic|13 years ago|reply
This is like saying Wordpress.com is the alternative to Blogger. The alternative is the software which runs the site.
Most importantly, this software needs to speak a standardized protocol. Luckily, this protocol exists -- it is called OStatus.
[+] [-] jv22222|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] hahainternet|13 years ago|reply
Why does nobody seem to think of this?
[+] [-] Todd|13 years ago|reply
In order to be successful, what this space really needs is a de facto server, like Sendmail, but one that's easy to set up and configure. Over time, this would make it possible to have a critical mass of compatible servers that speak the same set of XEP extensions. There are many open source XMPP servers. I think one reason this hasn't happened already is that most of them are difficult to set up and configure.
[+] [-] gcampbell|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Shish2k|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] prodigal_erik|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] vannevar|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] slantyyz|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] andy_herbert|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jiaaro|13 years ago|reply
Centralization has it's benefits, and they could be maintained without all the crap that's happening with twitter right now.
[+] [-] cdcarter|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] eddy23|13 years ago|reply
http://www.thimbl.net/faq.html "Isn't this just like identi.ca/ostatus.net?
The similarity is only superficial, in that we draw upon similarities with web2.0 platforms in how we communicate our use-case.
Diaspora, Crabgrass, NoseRub, StatusNet, identi.ca and the rest are just web-apps with some sort of federation bolted-on. None of them are truly distributed multi-tier systems like the classic internet applications such as email, usenet, irc, or finger. Thimbl, on the other hand, is just a finger & SSH client that illustrates that "microblogging" has already been possible on the internet for decades. It's done by simply presenting the data differently and making it look like the now-familiar Twitter interface. You don't need anything from the Thimbl project running on your server to participate in Thimbl, just the software that is already in your repository - namely SSH and xinetd/finger or compatible alternatives."
[+] [-] bencevans|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mhurron|13 years ago|reply
The number of people that care about why Diaspora exists and why a Twitter clone in the same vein would exist is extremely small. Small userbase means the service is basically dead on arrival.
[+] [-] jv22222|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] anuraj|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Shish2k|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] cdcarter|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] brianfryer|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lucian303|13 years ago|reply
Twitter's "protocol" is not a protocol but an API that runs on top of HTTP and they created it. The ONLY responsibility Twitter has as a corporation is to do whatever it takes to make the largest profit. If it failed at this, it would actually be in violation of the law as that is the purpose of a corporation.
The world isn't entitled to anything Twitter builds.
[+] [-] icebraining|13 years ago|reply
And that's not Twitter irresponsibility; its responsibility is to do whatever its owners want it to, following the law. Especially since it's a private company, not a public one.
The world isn't entitled to anything Twitter builds.
Nobody says it is. The article is saying that Twitter is not entitled to be the sole mechanism for distributing Twit-like messages, and that we should build and use a different one.