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Open Source Tweeting

Posted by Scott_Ruecker on · 11 comments
Linux Journal; By Doc Searls 		Mail this story
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Can we liberate tweeting from Twitter? It's an open question. And it's one that Dave Winer hopes we can answer, in response to his post We need: An open source Twitter shell. He begins, It would do more or less exactly what the twitter.com website does.

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Comments (11)

techiem2 ·
That's pretty much what Identica is....similar to Twitter, but more features, and built on FOSS.
Sander_Marechal ·
If I understand the author correctly then it's about decentralisation. From what I read about Identi.ca it's still a centralised silo. Sure, it's a much nicer silo with nice, open APIs and nicer people running it, but it's still a silo. What the author wants is something totally decentralised. Think of Jabber versus MSN. Jabber is totally decentralised. Anyone can run a Jabber server just like anyone can run a mailserver.
techiem2 ·
It's the same with Identica. Anyone can download the software and run their own server and have it link in to the main server (or not).
Sander_Marechal ·
Ah, so there's still a main server? See my point?
techiem2 ·
No, it doesn't require a connection to their server. It's just like jabber. You can run your own server however you want, and if you so choose you can link it to other servers. You can download the system at status.net (it's a php/mysql based system).

dthacker ·
Sander, To clarify, the goal is a peer to peer chat? Dave
Sander_Marechal ·
dthacker: No, the goal is not having a central server/gatekeeper. It's entirely possible to build fully decentralised systems. We do it all the time. Jabber, E-mail, Bittorrent, the World Wide Web, Google Wave, OpenID, etcetera.

And if techniem2 is correct, Identi.ca is the same. I'd have to dig in a little further...
techiem2 ·
Yeah. I tried to set up the system on one of my servers, but it wasn't behaving properly with lighttpd/php-cgi (which isn't really a surprise...I've seen several php apps that don't work quite right with it..)

Guess I'll have to give it a try on a normal apache setup. :P
Steven_Rosenber ·
About six months ago, I predicted that there would be at least a half-dozen commercial Twitter-like startups competing for that audience.

I also predicted that Twitter itself would be bought by Microsoft, Google or some other tech/media giant.

Seems like neither of my predictions are anywhere near coming true.

The question is why (other than me being an idiot)?
jdixon ·
> The question is why...

Most likely the current recession. Money is tight, and financing is hard to come by.
Sander_Marechal ·
Quoting:Seems like neither of my predictions are anywhere near coming true.


Oh? Wikipadia lists:

- Identi.ca - Jaiku - NotePub - Qaiku - AQA2U - Communote - FriendFeed - ImaHima - Ping.fm - Plurk

and about a dozen more. So, you weren't all wrong :-)

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