If the service is better and more reliable than Twitter then people will migrate. However making Twitter distributed is not a magical solution.

It’s ridiculous to assume that some new startup is ahead of Twitter in the goal to scale what Twitter provides. Sure, if you cut some features, relax the constraints on guaranteed, consistent and in-order delivery you get something that’s much easier to scale. Great, but they haven’t even proven they can do that, and when they do it still won’t be Twitter. And I don’t mean the users.

Cloning Twitter is the surest way to become irrelevant. Why would anyone leave Twitter to get the same experience somewhere else?

The microblogging sites that have a chance moving forward are the ones that have a unique identity, such as Plurk. It keeps the 140-ish char backbone, but visually and functionally, has its own identity. And best of all, everyone either loves it, or hates it, which means everyone is talking about it. That’s why its traffic continues to grow, and it’s already passed Friendfeed.

People are already sick to death of following the bandwagon every few weeks to try out the ’shiny new toy’. Many will tell themselves that they’d rather just stay at Twitter, unless they can see something interesting and different from another microblogging site.

“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.”

http://www.bdc.ca/en/business_.....iences.htm

It was this man.

“Sylvain Savaria
Director, Technology Seed Investments”

They were unhappy because our investor in the US did not want to reveal financial data. After that he talked to me and said that our product was similar to Nitix. Our product was a flashy new Mac OSX like desktop manager for X server. Nitix is a relabeled version of Debian for servers, and it’s not very popular.

The fact that they were both Linux based meant they were the exact same thing to Sylvain, the technology expert investor.

I researched it a bit, and I actually believe that their asking for personal financial data on individuals outside the country is not even legal. It would violate privacy rights of the individual, and normally you are protected as an investor in a corp or business entity.

I contacted the BDC ombudswoman, but like everything else in Canada, there are no checks and balances.

So I am very happy to be rid of Canada forever. I’m just saying, if you have a choice of dealing with the US at home or a foreign country, even for Twitter, buy American and forget it. It’s a risk even if you don’t realize it. Canada is not a very ethical country.

That’s it Chris, “blame Canada” for your personal failure. Yada yada.

Ever stop to think that maybe the BDC gave you a B.S. reason because they were trying to be polite?

I mean, they couldn’t actually come out and say “We think you’re a good programmer but you’re also a hateful, unstable nutjob with no experience leading a big team or building a successful company. We also think your public writings are unprofessional, rambling, and incoherent and therefore we don’t want anything to do with you.”

Did that thought ever cross your mind?

Does the thought that your writings here and elsewhere might come back to haunt you one day in the future when another investor (or potential employer) wants to investigate what kind of individual you really are?

Think about it.

“Ever stop to think that maybe the BDC gave you a B.S. reason because they were trying to be polite?”

I paid 6 figures of taxes these past 4 years to govt of Canada in personal and business, who knows how much I paid at 53% of 6-7 bucks a gallon of gas with the lengths I had to drive there.

Don’t citizens deserve due process instead of lies?
In the US there is due process for applying for services. But even there the govt lets you keep a lot of your money so you don’t have to be hooked on govt programs.
In Canada, not only do they need people hooked, but when you go for services you are denied those services arbitrarily.
This stems from their powers and charters being assigned by the Queen/governor general. It sidesteps personal responsibility in govt. In America the buck stops at the people, and not some divine overlord in a distant land.

As for being polite.
Sylvain wasn’t being polite. He honestly had no idea what the difference between a desktop system and a server system was. It was all Linux to him. I tried to explain but he was about as learned as a caveman.

His previous job at Orthosoft.ca being VP seemingly hardly instilled any technical knowledge about software in him.

“Does the thought that your writings here and elsewhere might come back to haunt you one day in the future when another investor (or potential employer) wants to investigate what kind of individual you really are?”

No. I am in the put up or shut up business. If I have a product and somebody wants it, they can buy it or not. I can hire PR people to be models. As a matter of fact I am hiring one on craigslist now to do a video pitch for my new software.

http://losangeles.craigslist.o.....06073.html

Notice I didn’t pay the $25 craigslist help wanted jobs post fee. I like saving money that way.

Your ad reads “Need hot woman for viral web video … I am looking for somebody that has a very bubbly personality and can look HOT in on video…You must be in a bikini and look hot”

You’re a real class act Chris. Hilarious.

I’m going to leave you alone now. This is just too easy.

My views on the supposed ‘death’ of Twitter and the potential for BrightKite:
http://cannongod.tumblr.com/po.....-potential

“You’re a real class act Chris.”

In my defense:
The software I am selling is directed towards that market. I am not selling EDP software. So I am hiring the appropriate actress for my advertisement.

If I had ANY Canadian or French Canadian paying customers, do you think I would have said ANY of this?
I may have actually had some respect for Canada.

Excellent comparison Erick. Despite all the Identi.ca buzz, it doesn’t seem like very much is going on over there. What do you call an identi.ca tweet anyway, an identeet?

There are already over 100 Twitter clones.

Talk about a pathetic me-too service…

Hi Chris,

I know we’re not suppose to feed trolls here, but I just want to raise a hand so others can see. I do agree that some montreal startups aren’t too legit (I worked at Capazoo for a year and this one was a total catastrophy with epic wars between brothers and scammed investors), but most of the others I know about seem to be doing ok and havent heard of anything like the situations your talking about.

For the past year, I worked for another Montreal based startup called Shopmedia who’s employing approx 20 people. We have a local community of small investors who watch what we do impatiently.

We are 100% legit and we try to be as professionnal as we can. Obviously we hope to get some money from the government but that’s not the basis of our business model. We have submitted for R&D grants and none of this is obtained from favors… we fill the forms, do the reports and play the rules of buraucracy. We’re not crooks and scam artists…. simply people with ideas and goals. If some money comes our way its going to be good news because it will help us grow and go farther in our objectives.

We work hard for our success, just like most startup’s out there (be it from the us, canada or kibutijistan)

About those evil canadian taxes; our company pays them, and I pay them happily, knowing of all the services and infrastructures I also enjoy. I have enjoyed the security of decent hospital care all my life, a while back I had no job for 6 months but got support from that same government. My kid will go through years and years of a free educational system… same things go for all my friends and family. So… yes.. I pay my taxes, happily.

As for giving data to a foreign country: Why not? We canadians do it all the time with american and european services… no need to get totally paranoid about it. You should try Quebec’s pot some day.. it would relax you a little… you seem to need it.

As for dissing Montreal’s women, “Mouahahahhaha…”, your funny. Most everyone who spent only a few weeks in montreal during summer will tell you how there is only a few places elsewhere in the world where you can find better women. But maybe your bitterness in that department results from the same kind of difficulties you had with your grant money at the BDC. As in “not getting any”.

Good day to you Chris,

Now I’ll go back to eating my Poutine.

Hey Erik,
Or is this really Steve? (not saying this as a bad thing by the way!)
Molly

yeah. Identi.ca and Twitter is extremely different.

I think the biggest mistake for identica is to register a .ca domain
I would never emphasize the “Canadianness” of my website, startup, or identity , even though I am a Canadian, because you’d immediately stand out from the American dominant crowd.

Now that identi.ca screams Canadian, it could hinder their growth… although I just noticed they are doing this because they’re called identica…. still think it would have been better to go identica.com

The two-word recap of this post is “Network effects”.

That’s it really.

Hats off to Evan Prodromou.

What a great idea..! What do you eat man… where did you get this idea..

Really smart and innovative… I need to start reading your blog.. to understand your other new ideas …

Much appreciated… Nag

I’m brushing my teeth now.

And I am brushing my tweeth

great info and innovative

Bug Report: Subscribe to 3 users’ tweets(in a sequence) and identi.ca logs you out…I wonder if that’s a feature they built into it???

I am having some much fun reading the ramblings of Chris and the fantastic and witty responses from Markus.

I don’t think I have ever laughed and smiled this much over a TechCruch post!

lol

“I have enjoyed the security of decent hospital care all my life”

I had to wait 4 months to see a specialist to get a tube of acne cream. Family members have to wait over a year for an standard outpatient procedure or a routine operation like hip replacement. None of your dental work is covered and dental is twice as expensive as in the US.

I have never received good medical care from a physician in Canada.

I had to pay close to 300 dollars at a govt funded clinic to have a wisdom tooth removed without any complications this past year.

http://travel.state.gov/travel.....ml#medical

“Access to a specialist is by referral from a general practitioner only and even with a referral it may take months to obtain an appointment with a specialist. Emergency room waits are very long.”

Gas tax is near 53%, which means that out of your $7 gallon, you pay $3.71 per gallon of pure tax.
Your “employee side” of employment insurance and QPP, QPIP is about 5 times more than what a software company would pay for workers comp here.

You are happy with Canada, because you simply don’t know what the rest of the world is like. Just like the people in the novel 1984, you are happy with your ministries.

I should mention that gas is $4.35 per 3.8 liters at the station on the corner of my street today. Which comes out to 1.14 per liter because our taxes here are reasonable.
Here we have an LLC so that SMEs are not forced to open large entities to pay triple and quadruple taxes.

I wrote a post about the differences in our health care system here:
http://adminblog.sitespaces.ne.....&12060

I should also let you know that Blue Shield of California charges $59 a month for health care. I was paying about 50 times this in Canada.

In America I don’t have to fund Rogers/AT&T’s television programs through telefilm and I don’t have to pay for CBC. After all, why would people have to pay to subsidize AT&T or Bell ??? Does that make any sense? Govt of Canada is completely unscrupulous and vile.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charter_of_the_French_Language

“Must also be in the official language, catalogues, brochures, folders, commercial directories and other such publications, computer software.

Signs and posters must be in the official language and they may also be in another language provided the official language be markedly predominant.”

What kind of twisted freak govt can tell you what language to make your sign or software in?

This isn’t a govt. This is a mob. These people are vile.

According to Evan, 10,000 subscribers in 3 days, Twitter should worry although to be fair to Twitter, identi.ca has had problems everyday for the past 3 days. However, it’s open source and other developers have already installed federated instances of it and start looking at improving the code for scalability, Twitter does not have that option. My post about identi.ca
http://ungeekdapo.wordpress.co.....r-is-here/

I made a mistake earlier. It’s 53% of the pump price of gas, like sales tax.

So it wouldn’t be 3.71 on a $7 canadian gallon, it would be $2.42 of tax on a $4.58 gallon price.

$4.58 x 53% tax is $2.42 and that makes the $7 gallon.

The sales tax is also 2-3 times that of the US, and the minimum wage is outrageous.
http://www.cnt.gouv.qc.ca/en/g.....index.html

“The minimum wage payable to an employee is $8.25 per hour.”

This drives the cost of services like a whopper combo at BK to over $10 plus a 14.5% sales tax where the provincial tax is multiplied over the cost + the general sales tax. It also drives large numbers of people onto the welfare system, and to stay for long periods on EI before utlimately ending up on welfare.

finance.yahoo.com/currency/convert?amt=1&from=USD&to=CAD&submit=Convert

The exchange rate has been at par for about a year now.

Canada is a socialist country bordering on communism in my opinion, and you should take a serious look before using services from there, investing there, or anything else that may involve Canada.

Chris: Ièm trying to make sense of your convoluted story here. You come to a large investment bank with a partner, they request due diligence, both you and your partner freak out and refuse to be as transparent as the process requires, and your failure at basic business is the fault of a whole society. Is this assessment of your situation correct ? It rather sounds pathetic from where I stand (that, and private-labeling the work of volunteers, as your business project seemed to entail, also sounds really fishy. Btw, did you reach that terabyte of hand-crafted source code yet ? You claimed that in a previous thread — and were, not surprisingly, counting the work of others as yours — that would be about a 2 billion screenfuls of source code; that’s a few man-millenia of work — about 10 screenfuls a day, 200 million days, let’s say you never take a break and worked without taking vacations, oh, half a million years or so, give or take ? In what year did you start working on that search engine of yours ? Was it before of after the advent of homo sapiens sapiens ? If I was a bank, I’d also request an especially thorough due diligence process in your case, and the failure to abide and perform would solely be yours.)

What’s to stop Twitter from reaping the benefits of an opensource code like Identi.ca’s?

I mean, they could study their implementation and come up with one that can make it usable. Or they could also either buy this code or implement it as is and become a service that works with open source (it would not mean to say that Twitter should be open source… Look at it this way, there are tons of services that are not open source but work with MySQL, which it is).

My take on all of this? Twitter should be based off IM’s instead of blogging.

@76,

“You come to a large investment bank with a partner, they request due diligence, ”

In a corp, which is a legal person, investors are supposed to be protected by the value of the shares they invested. It is HIGHLY bizarre to ask for detailed financial data of investors of a corp for risk capital. Especially if they are from another country.

The govt of Canada has investigatory powers to peer into your bank accounts IN CANADA, so no doubt it goes and checks with our without your consent IN CANADA. But outside Canada they also want to go into investor accounts?

That’s not how venture capital works in the US or anywhere else.
You can see how much a company or angel investor invested, but you can’t look at their complete internal financial data. Are you crazy?
That’s NOT due diligence. That is an invasion of privacy of investors.

They may as well turn you upside down and shake you if you try to invest in anything Canadian.

As for the source code, I already said that contained several libraries(some of which I coded) and a full library of icons and images I licensed. My software will be ready to sell pretty soon, and it will be affordable. No tax outside of California.

In Canada if you buy something at Tigerdirect in Ontario from Quebec, they will charge you the PST anyway. They say some provinces don’t have harmonized federal and provincial taxes but they menace most of the large Canadian internet retailers anyway. (we’ll bust your kneecaps) I think they may have adopted this from Minister Gagliano.

“If I was a bank, I’d also request an especially thorough due diligence process in your case, and the failure to abide and perform would solely be yours.)”

Chartered banks of Canada don’t need to ask. They have powers to go and look FBI style. That’s why they despise international investors.

You went into a federal funding agency whose purpose it is to help start Canadian companies, and they would come as second investors in a company already owned by non-Canadian interests; since you are repackaging the code of volunteers to sell it, you do not create jobs. Before you walked in, did you look at what the Development Bank of Canada’s mandate and role was, or did you just look all of that delicious money and didn’t care about anything else ?

If a Canadian company goes to the SBA to ask for money and doesn’t create jobs locally, what do you think their answer might be ?

(Luckily, the account rep who met you was only French Canadian; I wonder what kind of hate rhetoric you would spew if that account manager had been a Black Jewish French Canadian woman; that would make a whole lotta people who are wrong, because they couldn’t see that you are not.)

—–

As for the banks and their so-called investigative powers, it sounds so bizarre, so outlandish, so cooky, so freaky, that I can only come to two conclusions: either you are a deeply-connected, ultra-smart individual who finally uncovered something that nobody else in the world knows and are the sole owner of that truth, or not. Given your extensive track record, I’m betting on not.

“would come as second investors in a company already owned by non-Canadian interests; ”

http://adminblog.sitespaces.ne.....mp;1&9

I was technically Canadian, though you are correct, I did not have Canada’s interests at heart.

“since you are repackaging the code of volunteers to sell it, you do not create jobs. ”

Only the foundation was repackaged code. We were to create an entire new window manager interface on top of X server comparable to OSX.
linkedin.com/in/medericsalles
“I worked on a high level C++ library using libcairo for a new Window Manager for Linux.”

He was one employee who was a Canadian citizen from France. My company employed 10 plus people part and full time. I fired most of them. We had zero Canadian customers, zero Quebec customers.
We were paying out several thousands of dollars to Canada, and Quebec each month and yet their economy was not creating any revenue for us.
Most manufacturing, either of software or otherwise in Quebec and Canada is for the United States. Canada does not have a solid economy to eat it’s own dog food.

“If a Canadian company goes to the SBA to ask for money and doesn’t create jobs locally, what do you think their answer might be ?”

Our company hired over 10 people at what are considered acceptable salaries for programmers in Canada. Of course they were pitifully low for salaries in the USA.

“Black Jewish French Canadian woman”

Quebecers are amongst the most racist people in the world which is why there are so few minorities in the rest of the province. They are made to feel extremely unwelcome. I live in LA with TONS of different cultures and I get along with people fine. I have friends who are considered minorities.

cacommenceafaire.com

Please go to the url above and listen to this song from a Montreal police officer for details.

I took his advice and went to the airport and left, right after I fired the quebecers and stopped paying employee deductions forever, and eventually dissolved my business.

The banks do have investigatory powers through the govt of Canada to go and spider accounts and accounts related to accounts. Just as in 1984, you can trust the ministries, literally the ministries, and swallow the blue pill.

I hope that this was enough.

Mederic, one other person and myself were the only foreign Canadians besides at the company. All the others 7 plus were home grown. So I was not elusively hiring immigrants by any means.

I am glad I fired most of them and moved on.

http://cacommenceafaire.com

Here is the song, and I took his advice. I guess that’s why Canada became such a great country after 1812 and the US declined. Canada actually had the first railroad. They beat the Chinese immigrants daily to get them to finish it before the Americans.

“We were paying out several thousands of dollars to Canada, and Quebec each month and yet their economy was not creating any revenue for us.”

In other words, you could not sell your wares locally; was the product defective or was the marketing just terrible ? Because in the end you had to close, so you couldn’t actually sell anywhere else either. Funny how the more you talk, the less credible you sound.

As for LA vs Montreal: Dude, you are nuts. Montreal is one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the World, and incredibly well integrated. To compare LA’s ghettos to Montreal is complete lunacy.

“Because in the end you had to close, so you couldn’t actually sell anywhere else either.”

That’s untrue. I did not leave because of not being able to sell software to the US or elsewhere. I plan to sell plenty of software here. I’ve already started. In fact I left SO I could sell software and make a reasonable living at it.

“Montreal is one of the most cosmopolitan cities in the World”

Montreal is a very small part of Quebec and an even smaller part of Canada. Though there is a lot of racism in Montreal. Just look at Dawson College. The one Asian newspaper writer from Ontario that called it a reaction to racism was ostracized by govt of Canada and much of the Quebecers.

http://www.usatoday.com/life/t.....ians_x.htm

They even tried to leverage the power of the govt of Canada to muffle a late night comedian. Do you think the US government would act to silence a comedian they don’t agree with?

The first right in the charter of rights and freedoms, where as the US is freedom of speech has a restriction saying that the speech has to be within the realms of good taste according to the government.

What do you think the US would be like if they had lost the revolutionary war? It wouldn’t be that much different. I say this in reference to independence day yesterday. BTW, I had a wonderful time in LA watching fireworks to a backdrop of tall palm trees.

Am I the only one to notice wrong link in the article?? Look at the sentence “.. Evan Prodromou, who explains the thinking behind the project here” “Here” links to Michael Arrington article on Twitter decentralization instead of supposed Evan Prodmou’s one..

I think microbloging service will be more popular, not only twitter, but also other twitter-like apps.

I created one couple months ago, cipper.com. It enables you to share your message to worldwide users and pin it to the Google map. It’s a funny and new way to discover information on geographic basis.

http://cipper.com

Maybe, give it a try?

Jack

@chris - “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.”

Huh? In the U.S. an LLC is either taxed as if you are just self-employed (or in a basic partnership) or you can choose to be taxed like a corporation (with the double taxation and all). The LLC doesn’t give you any tax advantages.

Maybe stop commenting so much and learn a little about what you are talking about, first?

- Ask

“Huh? In the U.S. an LLC is either taxed as if you are just self-employed (or in a basic partnership)”

LLC is a limited liability company. In Canada to get limited liability you must open a full corporation where you do not have a choice of how you want to be taxed. Limited Liability companies do not exist in Canada.

Maybe you should get a clue.

Bjorn,

Also consider that with corporate taxes T-2 and provincial are about 70% combined on net gains, if you are truly an LLC and not a corp and had to file as a corp for an SME, you are taxes 70% on your income then another 35-40% on your personal income.

Then you are taxed another 53% on your gas. If you have to drive any good distance to work that’s $20 gas tax per day.

Then you are taxed approximately 14% sales tax on goods you buy.

5% plus the item cost, then another 7.5% compounded.

Then you are taxed again if you try to save money by buying merchandise from the United States to save money and you are hit with large brokerage fees because NAFTA doesn’t apply to SMEs that need goods produced outside north America but are available 50% cheaper in the USA.

Property and other taxes are also far higher.

I think that it crosses the line from socialism to communism in many respects. The state run television and radio. Paying for BDC, EDC, Heritage ect… Having govt officials that are so desperate they resort to things like this:

wikipedia.org/wiki/Airbus
wikipedia.org/wiki/Sponsorship_scandal
cbc.ca/canada/story/2008/02/27/cadman-book.html

Then having the mafia widespread.

I had a good reason to live in Canada for a few years otherwise I wouldn’t have.

Chris: Dude, your numbers and facts are so fanciful and crazy I doubt anyone will ever buy any of your arguments. The place you are lambasting is a common destination for Americans. They’ve been there. They know you are full of it. Keep your uninformed hateful rhetoric to yourself.

Those in Quebec, next time you are at Ultramar, check your receipt. Ultramar is the only gas station that itemizes the taxes. They show you the real price of gas. Go to Petro Canada and look at the pie graph right on the pump.

In @89, I forgot to mention, on top of all those taxes you have a 30% employee side of EI and provincial taxes for employees, which is their version of workers comp.

“The place you are lambasting is a common destination for Americans. ”

I’ve been to Switzerland, Germany, France, England amongst other places and that does not mean that I know what the government there is like.
Having been in ITAC, and dealing with BDC and other agencies of Canada, I DO know what Canada is like. It is not like the “Corner Gas” and “Degressi Jr High” series that they like to export to the United States to show their culture. It is more like “Trailer Park Boys”, except in Ottawa and with suits.

Oh, and in case you didn’t know, most Quebecers hate America.
They only talk about it amongst themselves and only in French.

They think they’re better than Americans because they are in fact communist bordering socialists that want a pseudo poverty like state.

The point of identi.ca is that it is not twitter.

That just might be the 1 difference that matters.

Not to throw anything on top of the pile, VCs and investors should also know that aside from the govt taking over all insurance including workers comp with a 30% employee salary tax on top of source deductions, you have to get collateral and professional insurance.

Just like the fact that the govt takes 40-50 times what health care would cost a healthy person in the US in taxes but does not provide dental care,

The govt takes about 10 times the cost of workers comp in “employer side” EI, QPP, QPIP and does not provide you with professional, fire, theft or any usable insurance.

Our insurer was William J Henry in Montreal. We had a policy with them for 2 years which was to expire in October of this year(2008).
http://williamjhenry.com/

The professional, fire, theft insurance in Canada is about 5 times that of rates in the United States for software. I am not sure what it is for other industries.

The govt controls so much in Canada, and returns so little, that any investment there is a waste.

Really, do we need another twitter ripoff? No.

Chris: None of your facts check up. Often, when that happens, people recommend that you consult.

Proof

http://www.petro-canada.ca/en/media/2128.aspx

cra-arc.gc.ca/E/pbg/tf/t2/t2-07e.pdf

“and for tax years starting after May 1, 2006, any corporation with taxable income that is not subject to the
corporation tax rate of 38%.”

That’s T2 federal only. Provincial is 30-35% more. That’s about 70%, which is why most corps spend 95% of their gains before the end of the tax year on purpose. You simply can’t build up capital in such and environment.

I could go on, but the numbers are all online. The workers comp one is especially bad. If you have an employee making 100k a year. They will pay about 35k in source deductions, and you will have to pay another 30k in “employer side” EI, QPP, and QPIP, where as workers comp is MUCH cheaper.

Go ahead and order something from TigerDirect.ca in Quebec, see if you can skip the provincial tax like we can with interstate purchases here.
See if Harper will let you off the hook for the GST or paying 40 times what it costs for health insurance here for a healthy person?

Go to the hospital and try to get reasonably quick service or an operation for cataracts or another common illness? If you want to get it within a year, you’ll have to take a medical vacation.

Go to BDC and ask for funding after you paid these outrageous taxes. See what they say. See them laugh at you for having been stupid enough to be trapped in their socialist system.

That is Canada.

http://petro-canada.ca/en/media/2128.aspx

I want to clarify. These taxes, though they represent 35% of the total cost after the gas and the tax are combined, are actually about 53% over the original price of gas.

http://www.cra-arc.gc.ca/E/pbg/tf/t2/t2-07e.pdf

This is a direct link to the 2007 T2

“and for tax years starting after May 1, 2006, any corporation with taxable income that is not subject to the
corporation tax rate of 38%.”

To see the individual provincial forms you can visit the provincial websites and gawk at those rates too.

The really horrible thing, is that like the soviet union where they took all of the athlete’s money, and inventors such as the creator of tetris,

They don’t actually come through and provide the services they say all this money is paying for.

I don’t know why so much hate towards Identi.ca or Canada… but I don’t even want to go into that discussion.

I think Twitter needs the competition (just because downtime wasn’t enough to make them get better!) They are currently working to repair its system architecture. A decentralized one is certainly beneficial.