Open Source Twitter Competitor Emerges 95
ruphus13 writes "Twitter has had a lot of public woes with Open Source technologies like Ruby on Rails, and a lot of alternatives have sprung up in the micro-blogging world, but no one has managed to dislodge twitter in its usage or appeal. Now, an Open Source alternative by Identi.ca, backed by project Laconica has emerged. From the article, 'It supports OpenID for logins, is completely free software, and is designed to apply a Creative Commons license to all the traffic that it carries. It's also built to support the OpenMicroBlogging protocol, meaning that (at least in theory) it can attack scalability issues by federating together multiple autonomous servers. The underpinnings of Laconica include PHP, PEAR, and XMPP. You can download a tarball of the source, or check it out directly if you're using Darcs (there's also an unofficial mirror on Google Code, giving you Subversion access for a read-only copy).' The community will still need to work on this, if a true competitor to Twitter is to emerge. It is lacking APIs, and SMS integration. Oh, and millions of users!"
@slashdot (Score:5, Funny)
Taking a dump, will read this later.
Re:@slashdot (Score:5, Interesting)
Beautiful, ontopic first post.
Twitter is overhyped, with a very small percentage of the world (mostly in the valley) yelling into an echo chamber, convincing themselves that the resulting din is a result of the platform's success.
Where once people penned carefully authored essays, they then started writing papers. That was too much effort, so they started making articles. Articles were too much trouble so poorly researched, error-filled, rashly composed blog posts became the new norm.
That was too much hassle so now people just puke everything they think on Twitter.
Twitter is a service, and remarkably few care whether it is "open source" or not (though they do care that it is purportedly terribly unreliable). Oooh, but this one is designed to apply a Creative Commons license to people's finger spews? Come on.
The twitter version of your post: (Score:5, Funny)
Beautiful, ontopic first post.
Twitter is overhyped, with a very small percentage of the world (mostly in the valley) yelling into an echo chamber, convincing th
Maybe /. should try enforcing a 160 character limit for posts.
It'd certainly take the wind out of rants and loooooong posts.
A limit on sockpuppetry (Score:3, Insightful)
Maybe /. should try enforcing a 160 character limit for posts.
Better yet: Enforce such a limit, but only for twitter and his socks ;-)
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Recently I've seen a lot of posts bitching and moaning about /. user twitter.
http://web.sourceforge.com/terms-use [sourceforge.com]
Please report any violations of the Terms (except for claims of intellectual property infringement) to the SourceForge Site Director at admin@corp.sourceforge.com.
If (s)he isn't violating the TOS, then just STFU & let it go.
Otherwise, report the user and let the admins make up their mind.
Complaining about it has obviously not caused Taco or the other Overlords to muzzle twitter.
More importantly, karma works, twitter posts at 0 or -1, as do the sock puppet accounts.
This is all offtopic, but it keeps coming up... And its funny:
I don't see/notice twitter
Re:A limit on sockpuppetry (Score:4, Funny)
Complaining is a right covered by the First Amendment.
Complaining about Twitter is a sport.
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First post about twitter that has made me laugh.
Personally the whole thing is overdone, but then all sport is overdone, that's what makes it sport.
Makes it easier to ignore twitter and those that complain about twitter.
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Twitter actually works for Microsoft. It's reverse psychology; he rants and rants against their evils in such an inane and idiotic manner that it makes people feel sympathy for Redmond.
I'll bet they pay him a good bit for it too.
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Trying to bash Microsoft into a sympathetic pose on
Simply self-defeating.
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I know. I was joking because he's accused me of being in the employ of MS, even though I post as much against them as I do for.
It was humor ;)
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It kind of is a good way to get people to be more sympathetic of MS though. Most slashdotters jump on any little mistake, and I personally can't help playing devil's advocate myself when I notice flaws in an argument. Arguing against twitter's inanity often ends up with people who in essence agree with twitter's views (but not the way he presents them), defending MS. That can only be good for them because I doubt most of us would have any reason to try to defend them otherwise.. they have made a few good pr
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I don't see/notice twitter's posts, but I can't get away from the complaints about 'em.
you're getting metatrolled.
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A trolling parody account based on the main flamebate/troll-ish creator of parody accounts? The plot thickens.. are you the open source twitter competitor that TFA is talking about?
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It would be nice to see things more concise.
"Christ, I love Greek! I stuck my wang in her pooper. The end."
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Maybe /. should try enforcing a 160 character limit for posts.
No no no, it should be a 160 character minimum. And it should be combined with an improved lameness filter, so people would have to actually think before posting, or perhaps even read the articles, so that they'd have at least 160 characters of useful things to say.
perhaps even read the articles (Score:2)
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On the other hand, I'll do myself a disservice and admit that I use Digg to find articles to read. I don't however, read the comments.
My point is
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Never is such a strong word. A lot of times the comments are more interesting than TFA, but when pictures or a video are required, or the subject is something damn cool - like that 3D display or advanced prosthetic limbs - then it's sometimes worth skimming the article.
It's amazing how easily massive offtopic conversations appear near the top of articles though. Even worse, I usually want to finish reading the offtopic discussion and sometimes just don't get to the actual on-topic discussion..
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I was under the impression that the slashdot crew has said the vast majority of slashdotters only ever click the article links and don't read the comments much less post to them.
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{sarcasm} oh, yeah... because what the world, and slashdot, needs is more pandering to people who can't read more than 30 words without having their brain seize up. {/sarcasm}
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wow.. from the moderation on my post, I guess that we already have too many people who can't read more than 30 words... and they are now the standard.
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Nah, twitter is for people who don't have the attention span for a TV commercial.
It amazes me what the attention-deficient online think is too long.
Many of you will never get this far in this post :)
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Amen.
Not only that, but - last I heard - SMS integration is one of the core features of twitter. Yet this "competitor" doesn't happen to do that. Should be quite the one horse right there. My moneys on both dying out in the long run.
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... one horse race ...
Re:@slashdot (Score:5, Insightful)
Essays, papers, articles and blog posts are all the same thing. The only exception is that a blog post is tied to a specific medium. Think about it - everything you say about blog posts can just as easily apply to the others.
The same works in reverse. The good qualities of essays can apply to the others as well:
A blog post is just the modern-day essay. On average, the quality of blog posts may be dire, but that's because a) more people are in a position to spend their time writing, b) more people are inclined to do so, and c) all are available a click away rather than the cream of the crop being reproduced in libraries or wherever. That's one hell of a selection bias.
Twitter is intrinsically different. It's limited to one or two sentences. It's only useful for throwing out a single thought. You can't elaborate. You can't form an argument. You can't support an argument with evidence. It's superficial by its very nature.
But does this really matter? Twitter isn't designed to replace blog posts, or articles, or papers, or essays. It isn't used for that purpose. It's a way of just throwing out a single nugget of information. Can that information be trivial and useless, for instance, "taking a dump, BRB"? Sure. Can it be useful, for instance letting people know about a service update? Sure.
Twitter isn't useless, and it isn't part of a trend. Overhyped, yes. Often used for stupid things, yes. But the link between Twitter and more serious communication is tenuous at best. The difference between Twitter and blog posts is like the difference between leaning over to another desk and mentioning something to a colleague compared with sending a company-wide memo. They are simply different things.
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Not really. They have varying levels of formality, and the expectations and effort *generally* differs dramatically between them.
Of course there are those who abuse the terminology, but I do think it's a pretty clean differentiation between them.
And a lot of people are seeing Twitter as the replacement for blogging.
more proof it's different (Score:2)
These [textism.com] are user-acclaimed tweets, most of them just comedic, but some telling whole little stories.
Thinking this way is a bit like trying to think haikus; perhaps why another competitor in the space is called Jaiku.
essays twitter (Score:2)
Each has its own purpose.
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I bet many of those people asking MarsPhoenix questions don't even have proper degrees! How truly far we have fallen...
but of course there's a nonsarcastic part to that, in that you see a lot of repeated questions, whereas in a more formalized Q&A people would be more careful avoiding redundancy (well sometimes). It's not about educated/uneducated or "smart"/"dumb", it's about controlling flow in such a way as to address FAQs before they're asked. You learn letters before you learn verbs and if there's
Oh nowww I get it ... (Score:1)
I thought he meant a core dump
You technical people confuse me all the time ;-)
CC LIcense? (Score:5, Interesting)
What? Does it just slap a CC license on any thing posted on it?
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I was wondering that too, on the site it says
"Unless otherwise specified, contents of this site are copyright by the contributors and available under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0
. Contributors should be attributed by full name or nickname."
Which i would take to mean that it does specifically put a CC license on everything unless you specify otherwise.
I think it would be better for it to be copyright the poster first and CC opt in, since fair use (at least in the US) would cover any use of messa
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Yep. It enforces Create Commons licence on everything you write. They seem to think this is a good thing.
I'm partial to choice myself.
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Great (Score:5, Funny)
That's all we need. An open source sockpuppet. Since open source software is usually better it will be able to mask as a regular /.er more effectively. Damn you open source and your effectiveness!
Oh wait, the other Twitter...
Re:Great (Score:4, Funny)
That Twitter is pretty much open source already...
Anyway, in his defense, he's been pretty good with using only the one account recently - and although I don't agree with anything he says, I'm perfectly alright with him expressing it as long as he's stopped resorting to the shilling that got all his accounts karmabombed.
Yes, that includes all the times I apparently threatened to kill him, which he has apparently diligently recorded. There goes a man with no sarcasm-meter.
what is it? (Score:1, Insightful)
What use has twitter!?
how useful can one-liners even be!?
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Rodney Dangerfield made a career of them?
Re:what is it? (Score:5, Funny)
Yes, but did it get him any respect?
perl -p -i -e 's/useless/insightful/' (Score:1)
There, I just made insightful all your useless rants. And I still have 100 characters left!
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The innovation value chain (Score:5, Insightful)
That single programmer probably wouldn't have made much of a dent in the situation, but another pissed off programmer took his work, and made it work on his system, twice and got federation to work, then wrote to tell the rest of us about it.
It was only after this that the blogosphere actually has a snowballs chance in hell of adding any value, by making sure that other people know about the efforts of these two programmers (and all of the ones before them).
As he said over at 0xDECAFBAD, '...ideas are fucking worthless' [decafbad.com], it's actually adding some value to the ideas, no matter how big or small, that get the snowball rolling in the right direction.
I hope this post helps someone else see how open source really works. If not, it's fucking worthless.
--Mike--
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In that vein, then just making an alternative in itself doesn't count either. The article says that there have been several alternatives that didn't manage to catch on.
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Ideas are great, everyone's got them... it's action that makes a difference. It's amazing how late in life you learn some of these lessons (I'm 44).
--Mike--
Identi.ca does NOT scale (Score:1, Interesting)
Just look at the code. Identi.ca is NOT a scalable solution b/c it does NOT federate out message containers. However, it's a good thing it's open source so nobody can be duped by the uneducated claims.
Resilient, scalable, multicast messaging is a SOLVED problem. Yet, nobody cares to apply the solution in practice. Hers is a starter for those who really want to created a federated Twitter competitor.
http://research.microsoft.com/~antr/SCRIBE/default.htm
Twitter has only one purpose for me: (Score:5, Interesting)
I have an section on my website that posts my twitter. In plain text. No fancy background, image-heavy, 'sleek' looking background or whatnot... it's just straight, text that shows my last twitter. It's useful for posting why X thing is broken on my site if I notice a problem from work, or my computer crashes and I want to let people who visit my site know why there's no updates, stuff like that (since I can text a twitter from my cellphone). To keep it from showing the same downtime reason for weeks at a time, I update it every so often with whatever random thought. Once or twice a week tops.
That said, the only reason I use Twitter is because it's the only application I've found that allows me to very easily and quickly post a quick informational update to my website no matter where I am (again, cellphone).
If this open-source option allows that, I'm all for it. Otherwise, I'm not particularly pleased with Twitter as a whole. If anyone knows of any alternatives that allow me to do exactly what I use it for above, let me know... I'll bail Twitter if I can find a better alternative.
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Just like paying for a hosting to place any other opensource cms...
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quickly post a quick informational update to my website no matter where I am
If your cellphone can send emails, then create an email address off of your domain for status updates. Then peck out a short script to monitor that email address and post any message content to your website.
Not only could you use your cellphone, but a web browser or email client on almost any platform to post updates.
Tweet! (Score:1)
Ummm.... (Score:2)
I've never used Twitter so could be completely wrong about this, but: isn't SMS integration the entire freaking point of Twitter? And aren't APIs also kind of important, even more so than imposing a Creative Commons license on all traffic? (I know, I know, Shakespeare could never have written his plays if the Twitter traffic from previous generations hadn't been available for
The source license isn't the point (Score:4, Insightful)
It's cool to get a good license, no doubt. But the appeal of Twitter to me isn't the software license - it's the service provided. Specifically, it's the timely access they provide to the closed SMS network.
For a while, I was using my wireless phone carrier's email gateway to send my phone text messages generated by server monitoring scripts. When their gateway got clogged and delayed, I discovered that Twitter wasn't. So now my monitors use the Twitter API.
Other than for that, I wouldn't bother with Twitter - and I don't.
So public licensing is nice, but unless they've somehow cracked the gates of the closed SMS network, I don't see much to be excited about.
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Definition of irony: being a fan of Twitter because one of their APIs *isn't* overloaded.
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cracked the gates of the closed SMS network
$$$$$$ will opens the gates to SMS. Maybe Google will wake up one day and offer a free (i.e. funded by their advertising revenue - like everything else they give away) SMS gateway API, or at least make it really cheap to use by regular peoples.
goodnewsbadnews (Score:5, Insightful)
Twitter is the singular most overhyped (and seemingly overstretched) and in-your-face viral spamming thing since Ron Paul and Facebook. Soooo much sock puppetry.
It's just another dumb passing fad, and if you're not ZOMG 14 you'll probably never use it. Presumably some retard media giant will overpay for it, and then no-one will ever use it again -- just like all the others. The sooner the better please.
The directors of Twitter are just another bunch of jerks who should be first against the wall come the revolution.
Why the Twitter hate? (Score:2, Interesting)
What is with the Twitter hate? Seriously, I want to know. I have barely encountered Twitter, and I have certainly not seen any "hype" about it, so maybe I just missed a wave of annoying news articles about it.
The only use of Twitter I have seen is Fred of MegaTokyo's status feed which gives info on how far along Fred is with a comic or why a comic is late. Anyone who is familiar with MegaTokyo is probably familiar with MegaTokyo's common delays, so this info is very useful. The three most recent Twitter sta
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I think it's a nice tool. I started using Twitter when an old college pal introduced me to a local scene of young freelancers who used Twitter. I got to know a few interesting people through Twitter and tell me this: what's wrong with that?
What a life to lead (Score:5, Insightful)
It's baffling to think this 'micro blogging' nonsense is really coming to the point where there's competition for it. Back in my day folks didn't particularly care if you were vacuuming, or watching a DVD. I guess one of the boons of this web 2.0 is convincing people that other people really really care what they're doing at any given time.
Just for the record, I'm currently sitting at my desk in my underpants drinking whiskey right out of the bottle while openly weeping.
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Back in my day folks didn't particularly care if you were vacuuming, or watching a DVD.
Sorry, but they did care. They want to know if it's Spiderman, because they've been meaning to watch that, too. They want to know if you're vacuuming because that means you can't go out with them, or that you'll be more likely to want to go to the bar after (depending on how you feel about vacuuming).
Every single one of your friends didn't care about your activities, but there was a strong probability that at least one did. They wanted to participate, or they wanted something to talk about, or they want
Oh boy, not here too (Score:5, Funny)
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PEAR?? (Score:2)
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PEAR, like CPAN for Perl, lets you slap shite together very quickly. Coding scalable stuff from scratch takes time and effort. At least they didn't write it using Java... :-p
What exactly does Twitter do? (Score:1)
Twitter is SIMPLE. Who cares about alternatives? (Score:1)
Twitter is a really, really simple application. So why should anyone care about alternatives. Anyone who wants to make their own twitter is likely a web developer and they'll likely code it themselves ... or, not I guess they can use an alternative but ... who cares?
The woes that Twitter has had have nothing to do with Ruby or Rails. It's a scaling issue. Even if Twitter were written in PHP or Python or Java or .NET or Perl or C or Assembly ... it wouldn't matter much. You would still need to put lots