Automattic Launches Group Twitter-style Platform
Duncan Riley
30 comments »
Automattic has released Prologue, a Twitter style service for groups that is also being pitched as a distributed Twitter.
According to Automattic’s founder Matt Mullenweg, the new service is way for users to share short messages with a corporate structure, or with private messaging between different groups. Mullenweg says that although it’s not initially aimed at becoming a distributed Twitter, they are offering the template on an open source basis and that if people want to hack it for this purpose, “you’re welcome to.”
The concept of a distributed Twitter has been discussed in certain circles for the better part of the last year. The concept is to decentralize a short message service, therefore overcoming the constant issues Twitter has with service provision, or in simple terms, many people host the service across many servers, and they all talk to one and other.
Allen Stern at Centernetworks says that “With Wordpress the dominant player in blogging, this could be a game changer.” Nah. It’s a reasonable enough idea, but the key to Twitter’s success has been three fold. One is its sheer volume of users that has seen it defeat competitors such as Jaiku by providing the most active and rich user base. Secondly although the centralized service is a weakness, it’s also a strength because when you connect to others on Twitter, you connect to others on Twitter. No working out whether the server they’re on is up-to-date, live or even compatible, it just works (when it’s not down, or “temporarily overloaded”). Third is the open access to Twitter via third party tools; just ask Leah Culver from Pownce (who’s not one of my fans) about why open access is vital in building something like this. Prologue may provide some open access, but its distributed nature will mean that ultimately it will be a niche product; possibly a good niche product, but it’s not going to knock the Twitter bird off its perch any time soon.
Dear Duncan
This is old news. In some ways you are becoming like Mashable.
This is what Z list bloggers like us should report now not A list like you
Tech For Novices
trashing techcrunch or just trying to promote your shitty blogger site? Mashable posted it a couple hours ago, but who gives a shit?
Tech For Novices
how is this old news? the news came out today, Automattic is a big startup with a ton of money. Was I excited by it, not in the least bit to be honest, but it’s news none the less. Sorry if it didn’t tickle your fancy, I’ll try harder
duncan - you get more excited by mahalo puppies
i think this is bigger news than you think it is - this could be a p2p twitter - but i agree on some of your points - thanks for link in any case
Allen
then I need to stop drinking car coolant and switch to the cool-aid because I’m just not that excited. Some folks will use it (eg: internal communications seems like a decent use) but it’s not a game changer, at least no in its current form. That and no one has seriously yet presented a working distributed Twitter model…nice idea but harder to implement than many would initially think.
Seems like a good program, but I’m not sure if I would ever use it. I think Twitter and Pownce really have this covered.
duncan - what if you could tie wp’s together - so i could tie into the techcrunch wp for Prologue. I will have more on this tomorrow but I am sleepy now and I want to play with my new iphone!
my job is to dream, whatever the dream is, we can make it happen.
Can’t someone just write an IRC bot that forwards whatever is received to their mobile device or something (and goes the other way too)?
But will it encourage others to start their own distributed services, thus siphoning users away from Twitter?
And we’re big fans of Twitter’s open approach. We used the API to enable two-way status sync between Twitter and Plaxo Pulse. The blogpost with more details is here: http://blog.plaxo.com/archives....._twow.html
Dear Duncan
Everything you write tickles our fancy
we probably access your site 100 times a day
Tech For Novices
“Automattic has released Prologue, a Twitter style service”
I believe this is not a new service, but a hacked-out-of-it’s-skin theme for Wordpress that adds the required functionality.
Correct me if I’m wrong
We can testify that it is a new feature from Wordpress… for we at TweetPress share the same (obvious) direction and moniters similar offerings (decentralizing tweets)..
That said, next very worthwhile undertaking would be to pick up from this http://www.buddypress.com (adding social features to WordPress MU).. then the world will have some decentralized and open-sourced facebook (equivalent)..
>That said, next very worthwhile undertaking would be to pick up from this
…, next very worthwhile undertaking would be for WordPress to pick up from this
Prologue is a Wordpress theme you can use on Wordpress.com or your own self-installed Wordpress. I don’t see how they’ve (Automattic) presented it as anything else. From what I see, it arranges posts in a way that emulates Twitter functionality. It’s basically authors on a blog making short posts about what they’re doing. Every “feature” in the theme is something that’s already provided via Wordpress. Anyone familiar with Wordpress theming can put this together VERY easily. They’ve just done this as a value-add (pre-built theme) for their Wordpress.com users.
So Prologue itself isn’t a competing service to Twitter - again, it’s not even a service, it’s a theme. Yes, you can use the theme on your Wordpress.com account but I think the leap from theme to “service” is still exaggerated. This talk now about whether it will “change the game” or take on Twitter doesn’t make any sense to me, considering Prologue doesn’t offer anything new on top of Wordpress itself.
P.S. I’m a huge fan/user of Wordpress so don’t get me wrong, I love the extensibility and flexibility of the software.
I just think this is something that can be worked on to produce an even better product. Only time will tell.
Philip
Mullenweg is the one who suggested the distributed Twitter thing….in denying it at least, but I bet that was on a wink wink basis.
Hmmm… is this theme available only for their hosted wordpress offering?
OR can a standalone installed wordpress also download this theme and use it?
Where can i download this theme? Anyone has a pointer?
Thanks
@ Evangelist –
This theme is for WordPress.com and self-installed WordPress.
You can download it here: http://svn.automattic.com/wpcom-themes/prologue/
I just saw that. Thanks Raanan.
This doesn’t seem to be packaged and released officially.
Any instructions on how to use it?
Thanks
From the WordPress codebase, all this really does is allow comments to be posted without a parent blog entry and then it reverses the display order.
“Leah Culver from Pownce (who’s not one of my fans)”
I would ask why Leah Culver isn’t your fan, Duncan, but I remembered I’m not at Valleywag or Gawker
@Duncan: not a big deal? vendors like Microsoft have 500 million users of their desktop software, SAP has a developer network of 1 million people, Oracle has 6.5 mill database users. Not a big deal? Think again my friend. This is a very smart move by Automattic for ground up acceptance of their services.
Twitters value is in its neutrality - SMS from ANY phone, IM from ANY client, tweet from ANY browser. While this plug-in seems cool, and I am add it to my blog for its novelty, it is not and never will be a “Twitter killer”.
FYI - anytime you see “________ killer” in your RSS you know its click bait. Thanks journalists desperate for clicks!
Since when is a WordPress theme a “new platform?”
So Prologue itself isn’t a competing service to Twitter - again, it’s not even a service, it’s a theme. Yes, you can use the theme on your Wordpress.com account but I think the leap from theme to “service” is still exaggerated.
# 25 stole my line. THIS IS A THEME, not a Platform. Wordpress is great, but to say this is a platform is just not true. In the WP blog entry they even say it’s a theme.
Great potential for this to break into the work place
http://tinyurl.com/ywujvq
Not really keeping to its original intention, but Prologue’s clean, white, iPhone friendly creative inspired me to build a Jakarta bar listings & review site:
http://www.jakartabar.com/
Innovative use of various WP comments plugins allow users to not just submit their reviews, but also ratings, as well as rate the reviews of other users.