The launch of Twitter clone Identi.ca earlier this week caused a bit of a blogstorm because it appears to have a solution to Twitter’s all-too-regular downtime. (That problem has reached comical proportions, with the familiar Twitter Fail Whale now appearing on T-shirts and kitschy art).
Identi.ca’s answer to Twitter’s scaling issues is by open-sourcing its code and encouraging others to host Identi.ca on their own servers, thus distributing the load. The service also supports other open standards, such as OpenID and a new one called OpenMicroblogging. Based on OAuth, the OpenMicroblogging standard is aimed at making it easy for people on other messaging services to subscribe to Identi.ca users and vice versa.
Identi.ca is the brainchild of Canadian developer Evan Prodromou (a Californian living in Montreal), who explains the thinking behind the project here. He has a lot of good ideas. In particular, we agree that decentralizing Twitter is the key to making it scale better, although there are other ways to do that as well. The service is also based on the idea that you can take your data with you at any time to any other microblogging service.
But for now, Identi.ca is only for super-early adopters. It lacks some basic functionality, such as the ability to search for other users to follow or to import your contacts from other services. (I guess you are supposed to e-mail all your friends the link to your Identi.ca profile so that they can subscribe to you or just hope they find your name on the public feed). These problems are easy enough to address, and Identi.ca has along list of features it is working on.
The bigger problem with Identi.ca is simply that it is not Twitter. However annoying Twitter’s erratic outages may be, it still has the advantage of having many more users than any other competing service. If everyone is on Twitter, what’s the point of going to Identi.ca? That can change over time, obviously, especially if Twitter does not get its act together. But the inconvenience of switching means that it still has time to fix itself.
That does not mean Twitter can afford to ignore the excitement generated by Identi.ca. In fact, it should adopt some of its ideas, like decentralizing its messaging system and making it easy for people to export their friends and data to other services.
I like twitter although I don’t use it much.
people still blog?
if i want to know what someone is up to, i will call them and ask. web 2.0 is such a dissappointment.
@billy
Then got back to Usenet.
oops
got = go
You nailed it–Indenti.ca is not Twitter. I do find it funny that the same people complaining about Twitter’s disabled features and erratic uptime have no problem with Indenti.ca’s complete lack of features and erratic uptime, just because it’s new, decentralized and open source. But that doesn’t make it good.
Why would they need to have people run IRC style bot networks?
The Identi.ca service is hosted on Amazon’s S3, E2 cloud. They have all the computing power they CAN PAY FOR. Wooops, they don’t mention that do they?
I say make them pay for the Amazon bandwidth with all that BDC and money the Canadian govt steals from people with 70% taxes.
I would never trust a service based in Montreal, Quebec. EVER. Simply because it’s french canadian.
If you are on Identi.ca you are now dealing with a foreign country.
Idenit.ca will never host election debates, because it’s a foreign country.
competition is good. twitter needs it.
Chris, I’m sorry for you.
All that hate must be hard to bear
I truly think that Chris is either extremely stupid or extremely brilliant, because his comments rarely make any sense. This is yet another example. What the hell is he talking about?
And for a bit of a laugh beyond Fail Whale t-shirts, check out the Fake Twitter Status blog:
http://faketwitterstatus.tumblr.com
What else are you going to do when Twitter is down?!
Chris,
How does your skewed view of Quebec explain the many software millionaires (and a few billionaires) who have built world class companies in Quebec?
Does it frustrate you that people who speak other languages and have other cultural backgrounds then you have been successful in global markets when you have not?
Evan built and sold Wikitravel and did very well for himself. So well that he can now build services he wants too and contribute them to the community open source. That he did while in Quebec (he’s from San Francisco originally) must confuse your strongly held prejudices & ignorance.
While you are at it, stop using Linux because international screwballs who speak other languages contributed. SAP should be wiped out because its built by Germans for god sake.
As Heri said, all that hate must be hard to bear.
small correction: identi.ca’s maker, Evan Prodromou (creator of wikitravel.org) is American, from San Francisco, but he lives in Montreal.
The other problem with identi.ca is that twitter has a much better name.
I’ve appreciated Twitter. It broke new ground, provided accessible functionality, and gain a passionate following…it has a lot of traction.
Because of its Twitter’s past service issues I decided to try (Jaiku and) Pownce. Pownce seems to be on par with Twitter, without the 140 character limit. Other than Twitter was “first”, I don’t understand why Pownce seems to have not gained users and popularity.
The problem with Twitter clones is you have to convince all your friends to move with you. If you have no friends at a new service, no matter how great it is, it will be boring. Social networking, especially of the microblogging variety, is all about connecting with people. I’m not moving to identica, though it has some nice features. I will put up with twitter for now because that’s where everyone else is.
Thanks for the break
Well said, Austin. But why feed the troll at all?
Pretty soon, all this is going to pale, as people stand in bread lines and realize, as if the scales fell from their eyes, that any of these silly services had any impact on their lives or careers, the nations long term economy, and the ability of America to thrive without its real, specialist manufacturing mid-sized base which has been decimated over the last 20 years.
More social networks! More zero sum exits and buyouts where nothing is added to the economy except the excessive and conspicuous consumption habits of the founders.
Hey! How about a Mobile social network, that…..wait for it…let’s you findyour friends at the bar while the US Dollar tanks, gas goes 7, and your daughters are bought by the UAE.
Hey, how about a “Social Network for Your Apartment Building?”
The building being bought by EU private REIT.
GNU’s Not Unix…
Chris: Your comments are sad.
I love Quebec. It has given so much to North America, it has given so much to Canada. Its startup scene is vibrant and bears more than its share of the weight in Canada.
The fact that Evan is from San Francisco but has decided to live in Montreal just speaks to how great a place it is, and how great the people there are.
And hey, the people there are just plain better looking than pretty much any other city in North America.
You really should take a trip there sometime.
http://laws.justice.gc.ca/en/S.....B-9.9///en
“Her Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate and House of Commons of Canada, enacts as follows:”
The Canadian govt takes mass amounts of money from people. IE, regular gas is $7 a gallon in the north east, where as 53% of that is tax that goes to pay for Heritage, state run radio cbc, state run television Telefilm which funds lame shows like victor lucas’s G4 shows amongst all the other ones.
The Canadian govt also taxes people with SMEs about 60-70% in income tax because LLC does not exist in Canada, so to protect yourself by shares you need to set up an unrealistic large entity.
So the Canadian govt pillages then funds these soviet style tech startups and funnels money into companies that have no purpose other than to give people jobs. They do this to give others the impression that they are successful, when ultimately they just robbed people blind to finance it.
There was a 1 BILLION dollar employment insurance surplus which Harper gave to towns effected by these unfair regulations, which nobody approved. They also give the money to the softwood lumber industry just to keep people employed. When the US tariffs their goods because they know it’s not fair and just laundering, the Canadian govt cries to the WTO.
sitac.ca/pdf/07Annual_ReviewEnglish.pdf
do find, then Beerco
When I went to the last ITAC meeting at the Bell center a couple years ago, I was privy to some information that the govt of Canada stages technology white papers, hides them from the public that finances them, then takes steps to strategically manipulate the tech industry in relation to the United States where companies can not benefit from the govt startup financing. They only give you this money if you are well connected and if you kiss their @ss and promise to refund revenue to the govt.
So there are many factors why you should not support Canadian IT businesses. I just gave you the most important ones from my perspective.
They don’t play fair. They leverage private industry with the power of the govt which was bestowed on them by the Parliamentary Monarchy.
laws.justice.gc.ca/en/ShowFullDoc/cs/B-9.9///en
“Her Majesty, by and with the advice and consent of the Senate and House of Commons of Canada, enacts as follows:”
The Canadian govt takes mass amounts of money from people. IE, regular gas is 7 dollars a gallon in the north east, where as 53 percent of that is tax that goes to pay for Heritage, state run radio cbc, state run television Telefilm which funds lame shows like victor lucas’s G4 shows amongst all the other ones.
The Canadian govt also taxes people with SMEs about 60-70 percent in income tax because LLC does not exist in Canada, so to protect yourself by shares you need to set up an unrealistic large entity.
So the Canadian govt pillages then funds these soviet style tech startups and funnels money into companies that have no purpose other than to give people jobs. They do this to give others the impression that they are successful, when ultimately they just robbed people blind to finance it.
There was a 1 BILLION dollar employment insurance surplus which Harper gave to towns effected by these unfair regulations, which nobody approved. They also give the money to the softwood lumber industry just to keep people employed. When the US tariffs their goods because they know it’s not fair and just laundering, the Canadian govt cries to the WTO.
sitac.ca/pdf/07Annual_ReviewEnglish.pdf
do find, then Beerco
When I went to the last ITAC meeting at the Bell center a couple years ago, I was privy to some information that the govt of Canada stages technology white papers, hides them from the public that finances them, then takes steps to strategically manipulate the tech industry in relation to the United States where companies can not benefit from the govt startup financing. They only give you this money if you are well connected and if you kiss their butt and promise to refund revenue to the govt.
So there are many factors why you should not support Canadian IT businesses. I just gave you the most important ones from my perspective.
They don’t play fair. They leverage private industry with the power of the govt which was bestowed on them by the Parliamentary Monarchy.
I’m glad identi.ca is getting noticed. That’s not because I’m Canadian too. There was a time when Twitter was not Blogger but it found it’s place.
The pdf link was here
http://www.itac.ca/pdf/07Annual_ReviewEnglish.pdf
I miswrote “bell center” when I meant to write bell building.
Open source or not, you have to wonder who is really behind any french canadian startup.
If you are on Identi.ca you are now dealing with a foreign country.
Yep. One that (at least currently) has much stronger personal privacy protections. It’s unlikely that anything like the Viacom-YouTube log hand-over fiasco would have occurred in Canada.
Having said that, if the data is hosted on EC2/S3 (in the U.S.), that point is probably moot.
PS. On TC, Chris is a well known troll, racist, liar and generally a very unstable individual. Just ignore him.
I understand that many industries work in the whole Neutron Jack “you’re either #1 or #2 or hang it up” but this is the Internet and there can be a variety of awesome services that prosper.
I had to self-censor because the opportunities this approach opens up are just TOO BIG TO BE BELIEVED.
Here is a service bigger than twitter
http://venturebeat.com/2008/06.....s-gupshup/
I live in Montreal and it’s a wonderful city and the people are amazing. As for identi.ca, it’s a good domain name, it’s catchy and easy to remember. I wouldn’t be surprised if it took on twitter.
Due to its nature, it would probably attract more tech savvy people.
I suppose clones need to be made but they should realize that twitter has a community and this is just as powerful as technology. This will not take on twitter.
Funny thing, this network stickiness. There is something that obviously has a lot of rational advantages, yet you still wouldn’t consider leaving your old service because so many others are connected to you at the old service. Shows how important it is to be first in these kind of services…
The name sucks, its not gonna fly…
Are you going to “identi” what you’re doing… twitter has already become a geek verb.
And as it is a lot of people are moving to plurk.
Whatever the case, I just hope ping.fm will support it, I’ll just assign the account there, and microblog everywhere from my IM window to the ping.fm bot
@billy
That’s great when you have one really good friend. You may not know this, but it is possible to have other people you speak to called “acquaintances” that you honestly don’t have time for other than a quick burst of info back and forth.
That said, identi.ca is no twitter, and plurk is just too flashy.
Twitter just needs to rework its back end, leaving the front end to continue being simple, yet make it easier to follow threads. The others try to do this, but they get the simplicity aspect wrong.
dead pool on name alone
Guess it pays to be an early adopter at times.. wonder if you guys pulled that screen grab b/c of my patriotic post
http://twitter.com/georgedearing
http://identi.ca/georgedearing
Chris: You are right, Quebec is a terrible place. Beautiful women, sociable creative people, a closed-knit group of highly competent tech entrepreneurs, a life beyond the keyboard, a work-hard/play-hard mentality that is highly intolerant of grandiloquence without sustaining merits (btw, how’s your Google killer search engine doing ? You were fast approaching a terabyte of hand-crafted source code the last time you spoke about it). You’d never be happy here.
Stay where you are.
If it were Twitter, the release of identi.ca would make no sense.
If Seesmic, who recently acquired Twhirl, were also to acquire identi.ca, they could have a real Twitter competitor on their hands.
“Beautiful women”
There was this lady in my building on Newton in QC. Not uncommon in the industrial park. She would come out of her office only for lunch and waddle down the hall. She had a posterior the size of a mac truck. There were more like her all over the place.
Maybe it’s the lack of sun, maybe it’s the greasy poutine. Maybe it’s those fat welfare checks that the govt takes back installing video lotto machines all over the place where there are poor people, but damn, you’re wrong.
“sociable creative people, a closed-knit group of highly competent tech entrepreneurs”
I met the people that run Canada’s tech industry. They are about a sociable and charismatic as Tyler Cavell. I’m sure he will be the president of ITAC and probably Bell Canada one day.(no joke) If it weren’t for his coke fiend cousin keeping him down, I’m sure he would be in the Bell Canada board already, but he will be eventually.
As for entrepreneurs, like I said, if you have favor with BDC officials and others in the govt, you’re all set. No doubt, there are some people in Canada on easy street. Just look at Tyler, or Mulroney’s kid. It’s a closed loop.
The French is REALLY annoying but it doesn’t make Quebec that much different from Ontario. French people are far less educated though. I’m sorry. I know what people will think of my saying so, and not keeping it in like the average Canadian hypocrite. I don’t have to be PC anymore.
http://www.youtube.com/results?q=la+petite+vie
Even I’m amazed at how bitter Chris is towards Canada. Could all of his allegations of backroom deals and unfair playing ground simply be his excuse for why he hasn’t been able to succeed?
I’m not making an excuse for anything. I’m just saying that you should think twice before you provide information to a company in a foreign country.
Twitter has adhere to the same standards as us. They do not.
http://www.theage.com.au/news/.....17825.html
Chris got turned down by the Business Development Bank (Canadian Government small business funding program) for his “Google killer” search engine and is now Mr. Bitter Pants.
Just Google “beerco business development bank” and view the cached page for Techcrunch forums.
He’s been proven a liar, and all around douche-bag many, many times on this site. It’s funny when he talks about the BDC, high taxes and “socialist” government policies, when he himself was trying to milk that very system.
His business plan failed, BDC said no way and now he wants to blame someone else for his own shortcomings. He’s a small minded ignorant child-man. Just ignore him.
Regarding the site name, I think I should point out that it’s meant to be said “Identica” not “Identi”. Which is not a bad name at all (IMHO).
Already wrote about it, but hey, nobody listened
http://snurl.com/2cssh
Here is, for the very first time, posted for all, the first few lines the source code of the Google Killer:
CLEAR
SHOWTURTLE
PENDOWN
MOVE 10,10
…
PRINTOUT ‘BeerCo Request Completed in 731.21 minutes’
Damn French Canadians, I coulda got my million dollahs too if it hadn’t been for these sk… sq…. scheming uneducated fat commy uglies.
Anyone I care about has migrated or is in the process of doing so.
http://identi.ca/mlinksva
@37,
“when he himself was trying to milk that very system”
I was just trying to get my money back. I would easily have traded not paying double taxes for not having the BDC.
“His business plan failed, BDC said no way”
That’s untrue. The business plan was not for a search engine, and it did not fail. The BDC did not say no way. We had an American investor and the BDC wanted him to give up all his financial information. His personal financial information. The BDC and other govt of Canada agencies has the power to spy on anybody or any company’s financial information. The fact that one of the investors was not in Canada made it impossible for them to peer. Like lead to superman. So the investor said “no way”, he did not want to give his information to a foreign govt, and that was it.
The BDC was angry at this and said that the BP was a conflict of interest with Nitix
http://gonitix.com/9129/9911.html
So they took the people of Canada’s money and poured it into this company/website, and gave them enough cash to open locations with big buildings in Ontario, the US and elsewhere. It’s easy to see why. They took Debian linux and simply renamed it to Nitix Blue. That was really hard.
So that is my story with BDC. Again I would much rather pay reasonable taxes and re-invest instead of give it all the govt and have them play rich socialite and dirty philanthropist with it or to give it to their Ministers like Minister Gagliano of the Bonano crime family. Or to their friends like in the sponsorship scandal. Most of these transactions do not make it to wikipedia.
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sponsorship_scandal
When you finance a Canadian subsidiary or business you are furthering this.
LOL at move turtles.
Just imagine the kind of software you could build with nearly 1 TB of turtle code!
My video comment is awaiting moderation since 10:45 am
Chris, stop it man seriously. You already gave the reason for BDC turning you down in the forum post I mentioned. You said they turned it down because it was too much risk.
You’re hilarious though, keep talking yourself into corners. I’m enjoying making you look like the imbecile you are.
Good opportunity for an upcoming entrepreneur to implement the Twitter idea. Twitter is good, but I cant wait for long 30 sec to start following someone.
But still loyal to Twitter unless someone comes up with a brand new idea that encompasses twitter functionality + more!