Is there any reason why the whole publish+subscribe Blogs / RSS complex hasn't settled on a reasonably easy to implement standard similar to SMTP that allows organizations to run their own microblog server?
Its really disgusting to think of twitter (or any single vendor) "owning" this kind of function and preventing simple things like allowing text indexing.
I believe laconi.ca (http://laconi.ca/trac/) provides exactly this kind of functionality. As always, though, it's a chicken-and-egg problem. Look at Jabber and how little it has taken away from the proprietary IM protocols. As long as everybody and their mother is on Skype/Twitter/etc. there's not a big incentive to switch.
Yes but there needs to be a protocol not just a competing server.
It seems like the older internet protocol standards like SMTP work better. At least some of this generation of protocols seems to have played out in horrible ways like the IM market where one or at most 4 vendors have walled gardens and an open standard doesn't win. I guess in the early 70s when SMTP was designed there weren't a bunch of big corporations looking to "monetize" every new feature, just some bearded coding gurus in academia who wanted to build something that worked.
I'm wondering the same thing. One of my spare time projects is to design such a protocol (and if for some unforeseen reason I should happen to finish it I'll post it here for all of you to tear to pieces).
Another thing I don't get is when "everyone" claims that Jabber is a Twitter replacement, they're not in the same ballpark feature-wise :P
Its really disgusting to think of twitter (or any single vendor) "owning" this kind of function and preventing simple things like allowing text indexing.