I’m a pretty heavy Twitter user but I have long argued that we need the equivalent of SMTP/POP for micromessaging as we have for email. I know Twitter is great and has a great ecosystem going, but it can’t last forever. Sure a lot of us have gmail addresses, but we can still send/receive email from people who are on gmail. Right now we don’t have that ability, really, with micromessaging/Twitter. It’s a closed box.
Early on in the whole micromessaging frenzy Status.net out of Montreal developed an open-source server for messaging. Their service is Identi.ca (the server used to be called Laconi.ca, but no longer) where I’ve had a profile for a long while, but haven’t used it in ages. Pretty much because all the conversations were on Twitter and I couldn’t use Twitter clients with Identi.ca as well.
Side note: Bloggers, skipping the really bad picture at the bottom of the post. The DH post is a “teachable moment” about writing good posts. What was the really important part of the post? That Status.net is available for one-click install. Where was it? At the bottom of the post after an eye-searing image that I wish I could burn from my brain. I totally missed it. If you have a point to make. Either make it first or don’t bury it in the post as an afterthought because otherwise people will miss it.
My use of Identi.ca might not change much (I do note that I can connect my Twitter account now for seamless back-and-forth messaging), but I’m going to start toying with the server myself. I’ve wanted to for a long while, but reading the Status.net instructions for DreamHost, well I just don’t have the time right now.
Until now.
I skipped over the tongue-in-cheek post on the DreamHost blog—The Official DreamHost Blog! » Announcing…PetStatus.com!—because it didn’t get to the point quickly enough (and was below a God-awful tattoo as the last image—you’ve been warned) that Status.net is now available as a one-click install now for DH customers. Good thing I subscribe to the email newsletter too or I would have totally missed it.
So later this morning I’m going to set up my own Status.net install and experiment a bit. Oh I know that we can’t have everyone with their own micromessaging server, just like we don’t all need our own email server, but I could have my own email server on DH and be on par with all other servers. My email would come and go just like it does now on Gmail. So what I hope is that, while Twitter might stay the “gmail of micromessaging”, other servers and services will crop up to interact with Twitter. Or better Twitter becomes micromessaging client like Gmail is an email client, and we all start being able to use a more universal and interoperable set of standards.
At least that’s the goal. If it happens will depend on us and hosts supporting a critical mass of additional services/servers.
Here’s to trying.
