
Burned by Twitter, Developers Launch Distributed Microblogging Service - rwwmike
http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2011/03/burned-by-twitters-api.php
======
jmathai
Unfortunately, the only people who care about Twitter's recent actions are the
nerds. At this point Twitter has too much momentum for the nerds to have much
(if any) influence. Building "open" technology isn't an effective method of
social engineering here. I wish I knew a better alternative but I don't.

That being said, I never understood why everyone (including pg) referred to
Twitter as this great new protocol. It's 100% proprietary and this type of
decision should have been easily predicted. SMTP and POP are protocols,
Twitter and Facebook are websites with APIs.

But good for the developers. The seem passionate about the idea and are
building it. Kudos.

~~~
kirubakaran
What about Twitter's actions that are yet to come?

And why not just try? What if the open platform succeeds? Even if the chance
of success is 0.01%, it is worth trying. Also, a million such attempts by
million such teams can fail. Only one team needs to succeed. Once.

~~~
jfischer
Hmmm. If we look at some past examples of cases in the consumer internet space
where a new entrant overtook an entrenched player (e.g. Google vs. other
search engines and Facebook vs. Myspace), I think you need to have something
new and compelling about your application to drive adoption. I don't know of
any cases where just cloning an existing app was successful for a startup. Has
movement to a new player every been driven by openness concerns?

What can you do that is different from Twitter and cannot easily be copied by
them?

~~~
kirubakaran
If enough of us "nerds" get pissed of by the actions of Twitter, can't we
ourselves provide the initial momentum for an open alternative, with HN having
80k daily uniques and all? Does it have to have better features? (although
that will help)

~~~
rch
Making something better is the easy part.

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benwerd
This is a great thing. Status.net is an awesome project, and Evan is brilliant
- but having a bunch of inter-operable services and projects just makes
OStatus that much more useful. I can't wait for more.

I hope everyone's creating machine images for these projects. It should take
two minutes to start your own microblogging site - ideally with as little
technical involvement as possible.

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anon114
P2P twitter is absolutely necessary but it has to be done right.

First of all, ensure privacy with public key cryptography. Sign tweets for
authenticity. Retweets can just be additional signatures.

If a distributed microblogging protocol was interoperable with twitter and
user friendly, it would probably be able to siphon people off of twitter
proper. Certainly it would be an attractive alternative to anyone who NEEDED
the service, and that's the important thing, right? Hopefully work out a way
so that tweets on twitter.com can be captured and distributed in this P2P
network. These tweets could be unsigned since if you include a link to the
original tweet they can be verified.

Defining protocols instead of providing services democratizes a layer of the
OSI model. We need to think deeper than that, though. We need to democratize
the physical layer as well. Luckily we've proven that you don't need a high
bandwidth link to be useful in a crisis situation. Twitter will do. To that
end, I suggest that this project make an even more lofty goal:

Create a small embedded device interoperable with this P2P microblogging
network. The device can communicate with peers over a Software Defined Radio.
The device should be capable of bridging to a wi-fi or 3g network. This would
accomplish the democratization of the physical layer which is so important to
combat censorship and oppression.

You can't monetize democracy. This is why these projects will only happen on a
volunteer/charity basis.

~~~
im_dario
My final degree project in Computer Science was an attempt to build a P2P
twitter <http://code.google.com/p/qantiqa/>

Due to personal issues and a tight deadline it was not featureful as I wished
but it worked, although there is a central point that works as gateway to the
overlay.

Anyway, after this point, it works fully decentralized.

~~~
dchest
Looks interesting. Is there a human-readable description of the protocol
somewhere?

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mindstab
Didn't this already happen, and last time we got identi.ca? Why spin off a new
microblogging site when there already is one rebel site full of open source
devs? What does rStat.us get us that identi.ca didn't?

~~~
drinian
As mentioned in the article, all of these services use the OStatus protocol
for interoperability.

It's pretty great stuff -- I have a StatusNet instance on my website, and
people can follow me from other StatusNet instances, I can follow them; it
really is decentralized Twitter.

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tomkarlo
Sounds great, looks great, but actually trying to sign up with a new account
using email address (because using my Twitter or Facebook login on this seems
well, kind of inappropriate) returns "Internal Server Error".

Fail.

~~~
ddagradi
We're aware of the email issue, and we're working to fix it. Please keep in
mind that this is an alpha release from a small team in a little under two
weeks, and there's a long way to go.

~~~
wyclif
Same here. Server error upon using the email link.

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marcamillion
I hate to say it...but like Diaspora, I expect this to come out with a bang
and slowly peter out and die.

It's not because Twitter's technology is any more superior. It's the simple
thing called 'network effects'.

Unfortunately, as others have pointed out, I think Twitter is too far along
for their momentum to be stopped.

Valiant attempt, and kudos to the developer(s) for actually getting it
launched - but this is definitely like spitting in the wind....imho of course.

~~~
cabalamat
> _It's not because Twitter's technology is any more superior. It's the simple
> thing called 'network effects'._

I agree, and the solution must be to provide a service that is useful even
when not many people are using it. For example, could an rstat.us account be
set up so that everything published on it is automatically republished on the
user's Twitter and facebook accounts, and any replies from those places
published back to rstat.us?

~~~
_frog
It already posts updates to your twitter feed if you sign in with that account
and I've heard they'll be adding that feature to standard accounts soon.

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petervandijck
"In order to follow someone from Identi.ca, just paste the ATOM feed from
their profile into rStat.us."

That's when it all falls down, of course. And you can't follow people on
Twitter?

~~~
ddagradi
It's only an initial implementation. If you can't follow users between sites
with a single click in the final version, we've failed.

~~~
petervandijck
Cool, looking forward to more iterations. Congrats on the launch!

------
eoghan
Meanwhile on Twitter...

<http://twitter.com/#!/search/%23stoprightthere>

None of these people care, I'm afraid.

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SkyMarshal
Trying to register using email gives "Internal Server Error".

(I prefer to register for sites using my email address, and then link to my FB
and Twitter accounts. In case I ever decide to delete either of the latter,
other services like rstat.us won't be affected.)

~~~
ddagradi
We have at ticket out that involves better account management that's going to
get addressed this weekend at the latest. Being able to add and remove
services easily is a priority:
<https://github.com/hotsh/rstat.us/issues#issue/44>

(See other comment re: email)

------
markkat
I think they should consult some people with strong experience in marketing in
order to present this in the most concise and approachable manner as possible.

Their biggest hurdle is going to be apathy due to a lack of comprehension. The
more noob-friendly rstat.us is, the better their chances.

They've actually done much better than most, but it really can't be dumbed
down enough. There should be a clear barrier between text for developers, and
text for everyone else. I really wish them luck. It's a noble effort.

~~~
ddagradi
We've got some great designers ready to help us simplify the experience and
provide a clearer and more comprehensible message. It can't be stressed enough
how important great design is to a project like this, and I'm looking forward
to crafting a truly elegant experience.

~~~
markkat
Cool! I'm looking forward to seeing what you guys come up with. Like I said,
what you have gives the impression that it's on your mind.

The underlying concept is actually a pretty heady idea to non-tech folk. It
might not hurt to get a bunch of them and bounce things off of them until you
see their light bulb turn on. Best of luck!

------
dclaysmith
I think that it is possible (tho unlikely) for an alternative to Twitter to
emerge but it would require:

1) All clients start implementing the "open" protocol next to the Twitter. So
send each message twice. 2) Someone takes the Twitter firehose and screws it
into the "open" protocol.

You would have a bit of noise but you would then have a legitimate choice:
"open" or twitter. If the number of people using the "open"
alternative/protocol achieved critical mass you would have something.

Maybe this is why Twitter is clamping down on clients. Undermining the
popularity of clients prevents the first item.

And Twitter would never allow anyone to use the firehose for this purpose.

So, pretty unlikely.

------
InclinedPlane
Twitter is _not_ "microblogging", thinking of it that way will only cause you
to misunderstand twitter and come to incorrect conclusions. Twitter is closer
to facebook and IRC than it is to blogging.

~~~
jmreid
That's your opinion. It's too generic of a service for it to be used in one
way.

~~~
InclinedPlane
It's not identical to facebook or IRC either, that's my point as well. It's a
new sort of thing that requires careful thought to properly understand,
applying inaccurate labels doesn't help.

~~~
ABFrep
It's clear what twitter is: it's a website, it's a SMS service for phones,
messaging, service, etc.

There is plenty of vertical development that can be done by third parties, no
need to focus on creating your own client.

In programming, twitter is like the IE mini-browser control you can drop into
a window and create your own 'custom' browser. Clients like that aren't
needed. Instead use the data in a new way, or provide a new data stream by
tracking something in real life.

------
dmoney
Lots of people have thought of writing "twitter but open". Congrats on
actually doing it. When I was kicking around the idea but never acting on it,
one thing that occurred to me was that, in order to make it really take off,
you have to create some way that everybody already has it. Some way to follow
and be followed by twitter users, for example, or a way to make it so that
your e-mail address is your microblog address. Just my two cents.

------
modernerd
Distributed microblogging: connecting the masses by making them further apart.

Great to see OStatus gaining traction.

Is there space in the OStatus spec for an email-like username/service format?
I'd like to be able to add someone on identi.ca by typing
theirhandle@identi.ca, for example, rather than having to copy and paste a
link to their atom feed. Or would that be too confusing? If so, is there a
more user-friendly alternative?

~~~
jamesll
This is an additional spec used by statusnet called webfinger. we're working
with the OStatus folks and should have support soon.

------
Tichy
I recently had this thought that even with a distributed system, probably some
centralized monopoly would emerge - the search engine, like Google for the
web. Following people works OK in a distributed way, but search and analytics
would be a problem. Unless an efficient distributed search engine can be
built, too.

------
andresmh
written in Ruby to attract more developers than identi.ca that is written in
PHP... really?

~~~
OSButler
That line irked me too. I don't believe anyone would take offence about the
underlying technology, if the product is of excellent quality. The OP might
want to add some more explanation to that point, as it seems more like the
usual php bashing than being based on substantial data to validate that point.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
I took it to mean that there are some languages that certain developers won't
touch, and php is one of those and ruby isn't. Can't we agree on that?

------
bergie
I wish there was a OStatus implementation to a Jaiku-like service (see for
instance <http://qaiku.com> )

The threaded microblogging model supports far deeper interaction than the way
Twitter works.

~~~
elrodeo
<http://identi.ca/group>

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benatkin
Has anyone managed to subscribe to an rstat.us feed from identi.ca?

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ajays
If I could draw an analogy: Twitter is like AIM. Can we put together an open
service, like XMPP, which interfaces to TWitter, but is distributed and free?

------
shuri
The question is how can you get UberMedia on board.

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elrodeo
I'd suggest that all people who want to try out rstat.us post something with
hash tag #hackernews, such that we can connect there.

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rch
Strange to see a reference to couchdb/couchbase so awkwardly shoehorned into
the article.

------
w1ntermute
People are going to be a lot more hesistant about this after the Diaspora
fiasco.

~~~
andresmh
is it officially a fiasco?

~~~
ddagradi
I'd call it a -gate

------
pathik
The next Diaspora. Doomed to fail.

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TheSwede75
I LOVE the fact that you can 'login with twitter' to rstat :-)

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TheSwede75
Internal server error when trying to sign-up.

~~~
ddagradi
There's an email issue we're aware of. Twitter and Facebook logins are working
correctly.

~~~
TheSwede75
Thx, I did notice. Testing out with twitter login :-)

