(2007-03-29) Open Source Twitter

Dave Winer kicks off a discussion on the idea of an Open Twitter. I Commented, wondering what the key draw is. (Is there a need to Open Source now, or just be ready in case Twitter shuts down?)

Jan'2008 update: more big outages, both in December and during the Steve Jobs Mac World keynote) have re-raised the idea of decentralizing this service. Both RSS and XMPP seem like key technologies. (Open Social Networking Model)

• more people are talking about XMPP as a piece of the PubSub puzzle.

• I understand that the Kamaelia FrameWork (Python!) supports XMPP.

Feb28: he thinks replacement needs to be an API-compatible clone. I Commented to wonder whether the huge amount of traffic coming via their API was in a sense a low-quality burden for them (in other words, creating stability problems while not really delivery a whole lot of significant value, but just eye-candy for widget junkies).

Apr22: he's just publishing a separate RSS feed for MicroBlog bits he'd normally put through Twitter, and adding that to his FriendFeed stream (plus of course you can subscribe to it directly).

Note you can also publish your GTalk status to FriendFeed.

• I just updated my GTalk status (via AdiumX) and that showed up right away

• changed status back to "Available" - that's not showing up promptly (09:20)

• directly messaged the FriendFeed bot - that's not showing up promptly (09:22)