Could Identi.ca be a Fail Whale Killer?
Tech : Duncan Riley
Posted: July 2, 2008

Indenti.ca is a new microblogging service with extra features that immediately place this as a potential Twitter killer: it’s open source AND it supports OpenMicroBlogging.

If OpenMicroBlogging means nothing to you, let me explain. From very early on folks like Dave Winer have been calling for decentralized microblogging, where you can host your own microblogging platform but each site could communicate with each other. The main advantage of this system: when one service goes down the whole system doesn’t fail, like it does with Twitter. If you weren’t getting good service with one provider, you could then easily switch to another provider, while keeping the same friends and identity. Competition in this way encourages excellence, as opposed to Twitter which really only encourages lots of moaning.

The release of the code behind Identi.ca (called Laconica) is a bonus again, as in theory anybody can grab this code today, install it, and run their own microblogging service that is cross compatible with Identi.ca.

Bwana points out in a post that Indenti.ca is fairly feature poor so far, and the service lacks basics such as an API. There is a long list of “soon” features here, the bigger question though is how quickly some of the key features can be rolled out to keep people using the service?

Dave Winer on the other hand simply headlines it as “Oh happy day.” This isn’t a perfect service, but with open source code and cross host microblogging, Identi.ca could be the first real step to decentralized microblogging, and given Twitter’s ongoing service crisis, could be the beginning of the end for Twitter.

If you want to follow me (and I’ll follow you back) I’m on Indenti.ca here.

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  • July 2, 2008 at 3:59 pm Jennifer Leggio
    Why does everything have to be a killer? I signed up but it looks like Twitter circa its birth versus a new concept. I guess the kill could be the code behind the site, if there is such a kill.
  • July 2, 2008 at 4:00 pm Mark Trapp
    Because there's a secret Caligula in every social media blogger, Jennifer.
  • July 2, 2008 at 4:00 pm Jay Tannenbaum
    They should call it Ishmael.
  • July 2, 2008 at 4:01 pm Matt Harwood
    Jennifer : I'd hazard a guess that the (misguided) male instinct to "kill" or "overpower" has a lot to do with it. I've not met a businesswoman that has ever said the word killer... but maybe I'm wrong.
  • July 2, 2008 at 4:01 pm Michael C. Harris
    Because someone needs to put Twitter out of its misery ?
  • July 2, 2008 at 4:02 pm Christian Anderson
    think you might be missing the joke
  • July 2, 2008 at 4:03 pm Ken Sheppardson
    Jeez, Louise. Whadya say we wait and see if it can operate for 24 hrs without going down now that there's some real load on it or see if it can provide Jabber support for more than a week first (unlike Plurk). BTW, I can't get it to send me a Gtalk conf code.
  • July 2, 2008 at 4:04 pm Kambiz Kamrani
    We're on a whale hunt, Jennifer. A fail whale hunt.
  • July 2, 2008 at 4:07 pm Jennifer Leggio
    Christian - I got the joke. I'm just sensitive to the word "killer" since everything is called a killer these days. It's losing its meaning. Like "market leading" and "best in class." ;-)
  • July 2, 2008 at 4:18 pm Duncan Riley
    Jennifer, the biggest point: as much as Indenti.ca isn't brilliant, it just changed the rules. Open source code, anyone can host, cross communications. Even if it fails, it just gave the world decentrazlied microblogging, and once enough ppl on enough services (note multiple) are tied into this, Twitter is dead. Indenti.ca won't do it alone...but it doesn't have to, it's the start of something bigger. Identi.ca is the freedom seed
  • July 2, 2008 at 4:19 pm Susan Beebe
    maybe... as long as it doesn't look retarded or crash I'm interested, just kidding!
  • July 2, 2008 at 4:21 pm Andrew Smith
    It can only be a killer if it proactively leverages it's synergies with market leading solutions.
  • July 2, 2008 at 4:23 pm Duncan Riley
    Susan, the best thing: if it does crash, you find someone else running it :-) I'm betting (presuming the code is usable) that we'll see another compatible provider in a week (I'm also betting Dave Winer is already testing the code), and possibly 4-5 within a month. Every single host is a cut to Twitter.
  • July 2, 2008 at 4:24 pm Bwana McCall
    Thanks for the link love Duncan. I agree totally. It's hard not to get excited about an open sourced, decentralized microblogging platform. I'll be watching this one very closely.
  • July 2, 2008 at 4:27 pm Jennifer Leggio
    Duncan - Makes total sense, thank you.
  • July 2, 2008 at 4:27 pm Jennifer Leggio
    Andrew - I needed that laugh. ;)
  • July 2, 2008 at 4:27 pm Mark Forman
    Identi.ca you have 15 seconds to cat herd all these geeks and make them of one satisfied mine...kthxbai!
  • July 2, 2008 at 4:31 pm Christine Lu
    Duncan, does decentralized and open source microblogging mean i can theoretically have a version for my own online community? sorry, not a techie so trying to guess that's what you mean.
  • July 2, 2008 at 4:35 pm Michael C. Harris
    I think open source is significant here. There's been a lot of commentary from geeks about how to make Twitter better, and I think a lot of people will take a look. I'll certainly download the code and play around. The big thing though, iiuc, will be that services can talk to each other, and that you can simply change provider, keeping your friends, if yours starts to suck. We can all change to Jaiku but we lose our follow{ee,er}s.
  • July 2, 2008 at 5:44 pm Gersham Meharg
    By looking at the source code it seems that it is DB driven. The same mistake that got Twitter in to the mess that it's in.
  • July 2, 2008 at 5:57 pm Duncan Riley
    Christine, in this case yes. I haven't checked out how hard it is to set up yet (and it's early days) but you could host your own service and this would link into every other service running compatible platforms.
  • July 2, 2008 at 11:45 pm Ken Sheppardson
    It'll be nice when the identi.ca folks have had a chance to post more public info on the way the system works, but from a relatively quick review of the source and the OpenMicrobloggingProtocol spec, it doesn't appear the servers talk to one another unless you specifically subscribe to a users's profile on a server remote to yours. Once you establish that link, when the remote user posts a message to their server, their server pushes that message to yours. Like good old email, in a way. Just smaller msgs.
  • July 2, 2008 at 11:56 pm Steven Hodson
    beginning to sound even more like IRC

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