As long-time readers of my blog know, I am a very strong proponent of self-hosted, branded micro-blogging communities. Imagine, for instance, if ESPN were to create a Twitter-like site, just for sports enthusiasts (call me!). People are known for talking their minds on Twitter, but when someone mentions what they ate for lunch, they go nuts! How about a Subway-branded micro-blogging community for food-lovers? Another example I have used is a community, solely for Moms to communicate and share with other Moms. That’s why I was excited when Rachael Herrscher, CEO of TodaysMama, sat down with me looking for new ways to build community around their brand. What we came up with is something I’ll admit blew me away when I saw the final version. Yesterday they launched the live version of it, TodaysMama Connect for the world to see.

TodaysMama Connect – What it Is

TodaysMama Connect, put quite simply, is “Twitter, for Moms” (as I call it). They’ve taken a simple open source Microblogging platform, Laconi.ca, and have made it beautiful, something your Mom could use. The site has simple microblogging functionality, enabling users to post, in short burst, what they’re doing at the moment or what they’re thinking, while at the same time communicate with each other via @replies or direct message functionality.

In addition, the site uses a feature of Laconi.ca, groups, to allow groups of people, such as what we’re seeing through the #GNO (Girls Night Out – takes place every Tuesday night) “group” on Twitter, to truly communicate as a group without disrupting the flow of the site. In fact, the very large #GNO movement which makes Twitter trending terms every Tuesday has also created a group on TodaysMama Connect, and the group is continuing what they started over on Twitter, in the more Mom-focused environment. When users send !groupname and their message, the message goes out to only those who have joined the group on TodaysMama Connect. There are already hundreds of groups to join, top groups including “Toddler”, and “Office”, and “Potty”.

The site integrates fully with Twitter, so you can use Twitter directly from the site itself, importing your current Twitter stream into TodaysMama Connect, and also sending your updates from TodaysMama Connect out to Twitter. In addition, as a Laconi.ca instance supporting the OpenMicroBlogging (OMB) standard, the site works fully with clients such as Twhirl, which support Laconi.ca and OMB. I even got it to work on my iPhone with the LaTwit app (using http://todaysmama.com/connect/api as the API URL). You can get it to work in Twhirl using username@todaysmama.com/connect as your username.

Even if you’re not a techy and prefer a nice, plain, web interface, the UI is comfortable enough any Mom would enjoy using. The site supports normal login/registration, or if you have an OpenID you can login/register via that means as well. Registration was extremely easy. There is lots of help documentation, and if you get stuck, you can always pose your question, and @todaysmamastaff is listening (as is the CEO, @todaysmama).

The Power of Micro-Branded Communities

I’ve said this time and time again, and I’ll keep saying it. The only way Twitter will survive is if they open up by allowing other communities to communicate and build “Twitter” in their own environments. This is “Forums 2.0″, and Twitter just so happens to have the largest master Forum site on the internet right now. That won’t last forever if they keep their closed environment.

Businesses want their customers interacting in their own brand environments. Many have strict rules, requiring they host the content and do it under their own umbrella. Twitter can’t do that right now, and will never fully do that if they don’t open up.

At the same time, Twitter is a mess of mixed niches, all on the same platform. It’s very difficult as a brand to pinpoint users devoted and interested in a single type of product. It’s difficult to identify demographics. What TodaysMama is doing is enabling brands to now have a specific demographic of people they can target and share information with. Rachael Herrscher, the CEO, even shared an example of a local Zoo being able to share local deals to the Moms in the area. Businesses want this – and this is the perfect social environment to do it in. They now have the power to interact with one of the most powerful demographics on the internet – Moms.

The Future of Microblogging

This is only the start. What Laconi.ca and OMB allow users to do is connect with people, across platforms, in ways they weren’t able to do before. For instance, if someone were to create an OMB-compatible site for Dads, now my wife would be able to follow me as I interact with other Dads on the Dad-related site, and she would never have to leave TodaysMama Connect.

Evan Prodromau, the author and maintainer of Laconi.ca is offering services to help large brands set up and maintain these instances. From my conversations with Rachael, he was there the entire way to help with the technicalities of the TodaysMama Connect set up. Businesses like this type of professional service and guarantee. Large Brands will embrace this.

I know of several other large brands also interested in such a set up, and many don’t even know this is possible yet. Dave Winer is also looking to push this concept, as is Steve Gillmor and others. Twitter is a powerful force, but it has a long way to go before it can embrace every niche out there. I really don’t think people are as devoted to the “Twitter” brand as we think they are. They are devoted to “NASCAR”, and they are devoted to “ESPN”, just as they are to being a Mom, or being a Dad, and the products and services surrounding those. Twitter has led the way, but it’s time to break out of the mold.

If you’re a Mom, have a Mom, or are married to a Mom, I highly suggest you try out TodaysMama Connect. We are already seeing the site take off and I’m amazed by the many conversations I’m already seeing there. I think for the first time I may actually get to see my Mom, or my wife, truly microblogging and interacting with others via such a service. I only wish I could hear them from Twitter now. That won’t happen until Twitter opens up.

You can sign up for TodaysMama Connect at http://todaysmama.com/connect.

As I am speaking, Utah is having their yearly Open Source conference. If you’re in Utah or outside Utah (most of my audience is outside Utah), it is well worth the trip with some great topics from ssh tips and tricks to Wordpress Performance and Scalability by Utah’s own Joseph Scott from Automattic. I would be there myself but I have deadlines I have to meet this week (I have a big announcement to make next week which will explain my lack of time this week). However, as I was tracking the updates from the conference, I noticed there seem to be way more people updating from Twitter vs. the Open Source-based blogging tool, Identi.ca. In fact, I notice many Open Source proponents even outside Utah embracing Twitter over the Open Source-based Identi.ca and I wonder why.

Now, I wasn’t paying attention during OSCON so I don’t know if it was the same there, but I’m willing to bet there was a lot of activity going on within the Twitter network there that really should have been happening over on Identi.ca. I’m wondering if it’s just lack of education about Identi.ca, or if our views of the principles behind Open Source have changed.

I remember a day where in each company I worked for I would do all I could to try and get them to let me run Linux on my desktop. I still run vim and I still run open tools like Apache, MySQL, and Perl. In some (remember Red Hat 5?), I was making a sacrifice by doing so, because I knew I had complete flexibility to make the changes and configurations necessary to make it do what I wanted to do if it did not yet do it.

When I was an Engineer at Backcountry.com we thrived on this principle. It actually made us more productive as a company because when we used Open Source software, we could configure it the way we wanted when it wasn’t working the way we wanted it to as a company. This would have costed us hundreds of thousands of dollars in custom software changes if we used a shrink-wrapped solution. Not only that but we could give back to a great cause if it didn’t meet our needs, and in fact we gave back quite a few changes to the Open Source community because of this principle.

Now, if you are not one of those types that went out of your way to use open source software for the principle, and because of the reasons I mention above, then I’m not talking to you here. However, I’m calling each and every one of the Open Source advocates out that are on Twitter and have not yet tried, nor use Identi.ca on a regular basis. This is no different than running Linux on your desktop as in the examples I mentioned above. If Identi.ca is not working the way you want it to, as an Open Source Advocate and promoter, you have a responsibility to jump in and contribute the areas you don’t have access to. That’s the true spirit of Open Source, plain and simple! Here are the reasons why you can feel good using Identi.ca, or build your own Laconi.ca instance that can communicate with Identi.ca:

• You own the content you post – All posts through a Laconi.ca instance are published under the Creative Commons license, meaning the publisher cannot own the content of its users. This is very much in the spirit of Open Source.
• Identi.ca is based on open source software – as already mentioned, Identi.ca is based on the Laconi.ca source code. You can even set up your own instance and have it talk to other Laconi.ca instances. If you don’t like what Identi.ca does, then fix it, publish your own instance, or give back to Identi.ca!
• Identi.ca talks with an Open Protocol, OpenMicroBlogging Protocol – Not only are you given source that talks this protocol, but you can write your own software that talks this protocol, and it will communicate with any other software that speaks this protocol. See my post on OpenMicroBlogger for an example of this in action. This is called “Federation”, and IMO it’s the essence of Open Standards and communication.
• Identi.ca has almost all the same features as Twitter, and more – as I’ll explain in a minute, this probably doesn’t matter, but the only features it lacks are direct messaging and SMS. SMS is expensive, and most likely won’t last on even Twitter – it costs too much! Direct messaging can be resolved by means such as e-mail or text messaging in a much cleaner fashion, although there are rumors of some working on even that. What it has that Twitter doesn’t though, and this is powerful, is that all Laconi.ca instances support XMPP out of the box, which means live-streamed updates straight from users, in real-time. Not only that, but you can track those updates, as well as any update on any Laconi.ca instance via Track functionality. Also, via OMB protocol above, you can subscribe to users on other services other than Identi.ca, and vice versa.

Let’s not get me wrong here – I’m not telling you to abandon your network on Twitter. I’m saying if you support and promote Open Source standards and refuse to use an open service like Identi.ca that is based on Open standards, you are living a double standard. You can still use Twitter in the meantime. I still use Windows and Mac for functionality I don’t get on Linux until me or someone else is able to replace that functionality for something better. The concepts are the same. I still use Twitter occasionally.

Also, many are giving the excuse of, “my network is bigger on Twitter”. I’d first like to point you to my listening/follower ratio article on LouisGray.com as to how strong your network really is on Twitter, but in addition to that, let’s pull in the Linux example again. How many Linux desktops are there in the wild? How many Windows desktops are there? We use Open Source because it allows us to configure it to do what we need it to do, and often we can get the job done better because of that. We don’t care if the majority of the population is using another closed tool because we can do much more with the open tools we’re a part of.

I’d really like to see some more Open Source proponents using Identi.ca as their primary posting platform. If you would still like to use Twitter that’s fine – there’s a bridge to enable you to do that, but it’s time we stood to our principles and why we’re using Open Source in the first place. Please don’t consider this a criticism, but rather a Bearhug to come help us out in this cause.

You can find me on Identi.ca at http://identi.ca/jessestay.

There’s a new kid in town in the microblogging space, and no it’s not just “another microblogging site”. I talked to Brian Hendrickson, the lead developer behind OpenMicroblogger.org and its accompanying service OpenMicroblogger.com today and he may just have something to scare both Twitter, and Evan Prodromou of Identi.ca in their tracks. What’s amazing about it all is Brian has actually taken the OpenMicroBlogging protocol that Evan established and implemented the protocol in Brian’s own, non-laconica-based implementation of the protocol that would communicate with any other OpenMicroblogging protocol supported site, similar to the way I mentioned on LouisGray earlier. Yes, OpenMicroblogger.com and the accompanying open source software it is based on will talk to Identi.ca, and on a completely different code base. That means you can follow anyone on Identi.ca within the OpenMicroblogger.com service and vice-versa, and they were written from the ground up by two entirely different developers!

What’s even more amazing about this new platform is that while not a Wordpress implementation, Brian seems to have made the platform almost entirely compatible with the Wordpress plugin and theme API. So, basically, if you are a Wordpress developer, you can write your own extensions to the code, implement your own versions of the code, and write your own themes, all in the same way you do on Wordpress. Brian wrote the code from the ground up using a framework he built and calls “dbscript”, and it contains no Wordpress code whatsoever. He felt Wordpress was too bulky to handle a full Microblogging platform (do I smell a potential acquisition by Automattic?). In fact, adding in integration with the OpenMicroBlogging Protocol was as simple as just adding a simple PHP plugin to his dbscript implementaion. The look and feel of OpenMicroblogger.com, his own implementation of the codebase, is all just an implementation of the Wordpress Prologue theme that my friend Joseph Scott at Automattic wrote.

Brian tells me that while Laconi.ca’s codebase is very good technology (he had very good things to say about Identi.ca, Evan, and the Laconi.ca codebase, especially when compared to Twitter), the technology underneath OpenMicroblogger and DBScript is even stronger and more scalable. According to him, “dbscript is an advanced ‘Restful’ framework with sophisticated features that are not found in the Wordpress code base, it shares features with Ruby on Rails (ruby) and Django (python) — things like MVC, ActiveRecord, Routes, Content-Negotiation“. Because the underlying code is Restful, an API is almost inheritently provided for other developers to interact with your implementation of the code-base and write their own applications for it.

OpenMicroblogger and DBScript are based on an open source MIT license similar to the license Ruby is under. Brian says it took him just 8 weeks to write this advanced implementation, with other client projects going on at the same time and 2 kids, which shows how simple it is to implement the Openmicroblogging Protocol. It also shows his devotion to the work.

OpenMicroblogger.com, the service that shows off his code, has some really nice features (also available in the code) such as sharing links and pictures with friends – definitely a little more advanced than Identi.ca in that manner. He fully supports the OpenID standard (he actually wrote his own OpenID host using his framework!), and is very big on OAuth and other standards and open protocols so you can expect to see much more around that with the site.

This one simple and amazing example goes to show that we have only hit the tip of the iceberg here on microblogging technology. Now that a Protocol has been established, you will see more and more sites and developers write their own extensions of the protocol to implement their own creative microblogging solutions and layers. This very creative and innovative solution could just be a more advanced option than Laconi.ca to consider for Microbranded solutions in the future. Brian has taken “viral coding” to heart.

You can download the code, try out, learn more and help out the OpenMicroblogger.org project over at http://openmicroblogger.org. I’ve created an account at http://openmicroblogger.com/?jessestay, and you can actually just go there, follow me, and follow my OpenMicroBlogger.com updates right on Identi.ca! Or, you can go over and create an account for yourself.

UPDATE: Brian corrected me about it being more scalable than Laconi.ca (see the comments below) – according to him, “Actually Laconi.ca is the more robust code and is more scalable. dbscript is a meta-object framework and runs some extra queries to “learn” about the db schema — it is currently not very optimized for performance, but is geared towards being programmer-friendly.”