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Did Twitter Suspend Your Account? It’s Your Own Fault

Posted on June 10, 2010 by jessestay

After writing I’m on Facebook–Now What???, followed by FBML Essentials, one of the most common questions I get from readers is a situation where their account, their Page, or their content has been suspended on Facebook in some form or another. Just today, Robert Scoble talked about another individual on Twitter whose account was recently suspended for no reason whatsoever. I’ve written about other occasions of Twitter suspending accounts in droves with no notice (that time a glitch). This is nothing new. Even the famous Mari Smith, the “Pied Piper of Facebook” according to FastCompany Magazine, had her Twitter account suspended. Robert Scoble had his Facebook account suspended. No one is immune.

It’s your own fault if this happens.

Let me explain. Of course I don’t blame any of the individuals whose account has had this unfortunate circumstance happen to them (assuming it was a mistake). However, I question why more people aren’t trying to bring these services under their own brand and their own hosting facilities to store their Tweets and micro-posts to their friends. There are services that make this easy. I’ve written about these before, and today I’m putting action where my words are.

The best service I’ve seen for this is called Status.net, formerly Identi.ca, and it gives any brand, business, or person the ability to host every single Tweet or post surrounding their identity on their own servers. I’m implementing a version of this so I can control who owns the Tweets I share on Twitter and other sites. Starting right now, you can go to http://community.staynalive.com, register for your own account, and begin hosting your own Tweets right here. Or, go to Status.net, download the source code, and host your own instance on your own servers. Then, follow my posts at http://community.staynalive.com/jesse right from your own instance of Status.net on your own servers!

Still want to post to Twitter? Every account on the Stay N’ Alive Community site can connect their Twitter account and set each Tweet they post from http://community.staynalive.com to also post to Twitter. Look at this Tweet – it was sent to my own servers straight from TweetDeck. I simply added another Twitter account in TweetDeck, and set the Twitter Base URL (under advanced) to be http://community.staynalive.com/api, adding my own credentials for the Stay N’ Alive community. Now, any time I post from TweetDeck I have the option to post to the Stay N’ Alive Community site where I own the data (well, it’s all Creative Commons so each user owns their own data), and I can know that will also go to Twitter. If I want to do all my following from the Stay N’ Alive Community site, I can set it to import my friends’ Twitter streams into Stay N’ Alive and I can follow them right there.

What’s the point? Now I own, 100%, every tweet I post to Twitter, and no one can do anything about that. If you set up your own instance, you can do the same. ESPN can set up an ESPN-branded Twitter. Ford can set up a Ford-branded Twitter. Rackspace can set up its own Rackspace-branded Twitter. Scoble can set up his own Scoble-branded Twitter. Every post from the branded site gets hosted on the Brand’s own servers, anyone on any other OMB-supported service can follow them on their own servers, and no one can ever shut them down.

So, if you’re worried about your account being suspended, this is how you fight back. Go create your own Status.net service, post your URL in the comments (so we can all follow!), and we can all start to take back control of our status under our own terms. Or, feel free to join the Stay N’ Alive Community where the readers of this blog can all get to know each other! This is your responsibility – I can’t wait to see what you do with it!

To those who aren’t hosting your own Tweets, I say “Stop It!”:

Twitter, It’s Time to Open Source Your API

Posted on December 17, 2009 by jessestay

With the recent launch of a “Twitter API” by both Automattic (WordPress.com) and Tumblr, it is evident that developers have a need to implement similar APIs, on similar platforms, reducing the effort to retrieve data from multiple platforms in a single client. With Tweetie, for instance, you can simply change a single URL to “WordPress.com” or “Tumblr.com” or “Identi.ca” and immediately be receiving updates from your friends on those services, and even post back to those services. I argue this approach is very closed though, as for each and every implementation of a “Twitter API” (which ironically has nothing to do with Twitter), the developers need to completely re-invent the wheel and copy what Twitter has done based on documentation of Twitter’s own API to access its data. Readwriteweb even went to the extent of calling this approach “open”. There’s nothing open about it. Each developer implementing their own “Twitter API” (and especially calling it such) is blatantly ripping off Twitter’s API to do so under no license whatsoever and Twitter’s just standing back and watching. I think it’s time Twitter releases their API under an Open Source license to relieve this mess and protect their IP.

Open Sourcing APIs is nothing new. Of course, Google, with OpenSocial, did it and even standardized their own API for “containers” to easily implement the same API across multiple sites. All the code was provided for developers to do this and we quickly saw sites such as MySpace, Hi5, Orkut, and others all implement the same standard, reducing the code needed to port an app from platform to platform.

Facebook did the same with their platform. A little known fact is that any developer can go to http://developers.facebook.com/opensource.php and download the Facebook Open Platform, along with many other very useful open source tools. Immediately they have access to enable FBML, FBJS, and other aspects of the Facebook API to developers on their own sites, standardizing the Facebook platform amongst sites that implement it. Bebo was one of those who took up Facebook on this offer. Others can too.

What we need now is a standardized platform for sharing micro-content. Some have proposed RSS do this, which is fine with me, but since developers already have apps built on Twitter which this would go with it makes sense to also enable a standardized platform for developers to code on for these types of apps. Such an open-sourced code-base would enable developers to not have to change their code to enable access to similar sites beyond just Twitter. Twitter right now is a closed platform, plain and simple. With the exception of OAuth, they are based on a proprietary API, do not support open content protocols, and even their real-time stream is proprietary.

A good step for Twitter would be to open source this API. Enable sites such as WordPress, Tumblr, Status.net, and others to easily integrate it into their own platformse without the need to re-invent the wheel. Put it under an open license, and then your IP remains protected. Until that point developers are going to continue ripping off Twitter’s API, and Twitter’s IP slowly starts to go down the drain. I’d love to see Twitter take a lead in this process – it took Facebook just about 6 months to open source their API. Why haven’t we seen this yet from Twitter?

Or are they the next Compuserve?

You Don’t Own Your Data on Social Networks

Posted on April 9, 2009 by jessestay

I get asked often by clients, reporters and media folk and others about Facebook’s recent Terms of Service updates, essentially saying they own their users data and have a right to do as they wish with their data. They’ve turned around on that and will be releasing newly revised Terms soon, but at least they’re being honest about it. The thing is, any service on the internet you belong to, which includes Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, even Gmail, and more, owns your data. It’s their right to change their Terms for their users any time they want, and the only choice you’ll have at that point is to leave the service, or continue on, recognizing what you already knew – that what you’ve stored on their service is theirs to own forever. I think people have come to accept that – they just get all up in arms when it’s thrown in their face.

The thing is, as a brand, you can’t afford for this to happen. Owning, and losing rights to your data can make or break your business. People take risks to be able to take shortcuts and survive by joining such services, and frankly, it’s important to still have a presence on these services because people are talking about your brand and you could be missing out on that conversation. But can you really trust your content on such services? What if Twitter, or Google, or FriendFeed were to pull a Facebook and with the drop of a hat own all your previous data. They are within right to do so – you gave them that right when you signed up for their service.

The Social Web Needs More Open Protocols

We were discussing on FriendFeed today how the new FriendFeed beta, with its real-time nature, is a lot like IRC, and enables people to chat, in a completely new way, in real time. The thing is, it’s not at all like IRC. IRC is an open protocol. It’s software businesses can own, modify, and change to their hearts content. They can wrap their brand around it. With IRC a business has the ability to own the community that subsides within the environment they set up, on their own servers.

Not FriendFeed, or even Twitter enable this capability, which is why if they don’t adapt in the future things will change. Facebook is attempting to address this with their Connect product, and that’s a step in the right direction. Facebook also provides quite a bit of their underlying developer platform code, as open source, freely and openly to the community, also a step in the right direction, but they can always do more.

Keep in mind that this is all about owning your own community. Can Guy Kawasaki set his own rules about what is, and isn’t spammy? Can Leo Laporte provide a Geek-friendly environment for his TWIT Army? Can ESPN provide a sports-enthusiast friendly environment for Football fans, and properly advertise and provide things, in their own way, that those fans would appreciate? You can’t do this on any of the networks right now (with the exception of Facebook Connect).

Laconi.ca is headed in the right direction on this. As is Automattic, and SixApart. They all have their own major services, but all of their services enable you to focus on owning your own community. And even if you don’t have enough control, they provide you the source code to give you the control you need, should you need it. This is the future!

Why does this matter to the end-user?

You may think, well, I’m not a business. I’m just a casual user so this doesn’t matter to me. I’m willing to bet if you’re an Athletics fan, or a Boston Red Sox fan, or a 49ers fan, or a Mom, or even a Dad, that you put much more interest in those things than you do the brand name Twitter or FriendFeed or Facebook. Those things are your real life! Now imagine if those brands started to give you a way you could communicate with like-minded individuals, and what if different brands could talk with each other? This is one reason Facebook is going to succeed, and one reason Laconi.ca is going to succeed, because I can chat in the environment I want, and my friends all still get to hear me! As an end user, and especially a brand targeting that end user, that’s powerful!

This is why TodaysMama Connect is seeing great participation in their new Connect community for Moms. Now, with their service, Moms can connect with each other without having to sift through the massive data mine of Twitter. At the same time, TodaysMama gets to own and control the community in a way that works well for Moms and is inviting for them, while maintaining their brand image. You see the same with Leo Laporte’s TWIT army, and I’m already talking to several other major brands that are considering the same.

How do you control your data?

Will the future be full of everyone creating their own communities of “followers”, competing for who visits their site and embraces the community? It’s possible, but that’s far down the road. We need more open standards. The Twitters, the FriendFeeds, and the Facebooks all need to be providing and leading these open standards and serving instead of being data hoards, becoming network Connectors, providing ways to connect multiple smaller networks with each other. They need to be the directories and the places where people can go to find each community. They need to be the search, and the stream of the “brand-owned” data, and providing as many ways as possible for those brands to completely own and customize the experience for their own communities. Their role is the glue of the Open Web.

Let’s truly make these services the IRC of the Social Web. Thank you, Laconi.ca and Automattic, and SixApart for leading the way.

Photo Courtesy Eric Kilby

TodaysMama Launches a Laconi.ca Instance That Works

Posted on March 28, 2009 by jessestay

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.

With Threaded Replies, Do We Really Need the ‘@’?

Posted on August 16, 2008 by jessestay

I broke news last night on LouisGray.com about Twitter enabling a new API feature, “in_reply_to_status_id”, to allow developers to tie replies to their original reply source. Immediately afterwards Evan Prodromou of Identi.ca added the same functionality to the Laconi.ca source code, making two of the most popular microblogging platforms, Twitter and Identi.ca, along with the already supporting FriendFeed, supportive of threaded comments. Immediately we saw Dave Winer implement a proof of concept example, and YooPlace also implemented it into their own code. Loic Le Meur of Seesmic, the owners of the Twhirl Twitter client responded as well saying he was reading the article and looking into it.

So a big question has become evident now that we can threaded replies. Is the ‘@’ really necessary in your replies to friends on your favorite microblogging service any more? A comment by Steve Gillmor on Identi.ca got me thinking about this earlier, and I think he has a strong point. In fact, I’ve briefly touched the subject before here.

The ‘@’ is mostly a Twitter-invented custom brought to the service by its users with some slight roots in bulletin boards and forums where threading was not possible. Users decided the Twitter service made a great communications tool and began replying to their friends’ posted statuses with the ‘@’ symbol. There was no other way because Twitter wasn’t expecting to be a communications tool. The popular Twitter clients like Twhirl and TweetDeck and even Twitter’s own web-based client started catching on, and separating those posts with usernames prepended by ‘@’ as “replies”. What’s odd is that the only thing they recognize as a reply is if the username is prepended by an ‘@’ – they take no thought as to the actual username itself, which really is the actual substance of who the user was replying to. In fact, FriendFeed users are starting to do this as well since it only has one level of threading and users can’t comment on other users’ comments. (Twitter and Identi.ca are actually one-upping Friendfeed with their recent announcements)

So while the “@”‘s were a custom, they really aren’t necessary to determine if a user is replying to another user. In fact, even today you can use an XMPP tracker like Twitter Spy and Laconica Spy and track your username and get notified when a person mentions your username, exactly the way “@” replies work. It was silly that the “@”‘s were required to be recognized as a reply in the first place.

Now, considering you can now actually track on the back end the entire hierarchy of a conversation via the API “@”‘s are even less necessary as before. I’d like to see the various microblogging clients start to ignore the “@”‘s and allow users to simply type usernames when replying to another individual, assuming threads aren’t in place. Then, once threads start to show in your favorite microblogging clients, even the usernames shouldn’t be necessary.

I’ve mentioned before that IRC works this way and most IRC clients will look at the existing list of users in a room and automatically detect the username and notify the targeted user if the message is directed at that user. Not only that, but the IRC clients actually keep a cached version of the users in a particular room and will even auto-complete usernames if you begin typing in the username and hit “tab”. That’s what I’d like to start seeing microblogging clients do so long as they’re going to be supporting a communications platform, and it should start with Twitter and Identi.ca themselves on their own web interfaces.

Then again, all this may now be moot with threading available. Oh, and don’t even get me started on hashtags. (Those should be handled by the API, not in the content of the message!) I think I’m going to try a new experiment of just not using the “@”‘s like Steve Gillmor does – anyone else want to join me?

Laconica’s Not the Only Cool Kid In Town – Introducing OpenMicroblogger

Posted on August 15, 2008 by 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.”

Identi.ca Will Succeed Because Its Technology is Viral

Posted on August 14, 2008 by jessestay

Yesterday I guest-posted on LouisGray.com about how the technology behind Identi.ca, Laconi.ca, could pose as the launching platform to brand many smaller microblogging services. Today I’d like to share one more power of the service – its working API. Identi.ca/Laconi.ca seem to have introduced a new ideology to Web 2.0 with this code, viral software.

Now, when I mention “viral software”, I’m not necessarily mentioning software that can make things viral. I’m instead meaning software in which the underlying code itself is viral. This could change the face of the way developers write code in the future, and open source is only part of it.

Today I noticed (through Steve Gillmor on identi.ca) another new interesting thing that I knew was coming – Brad Williams (@williamsba) wrote a bridge that essentially allows you to post on identi.ca and have it automatically post to Twitter, prepended by “identi.ca:”. Interestingly enough, “Hippy Steve” (@exador23) pointed out now one of the top trends on Twitter as of today, according to http://search.twitter.com is “identi”. Now, many of the posts you see on Twitter are going to become posts prepended by “identi.ca:”, and many more are going to feel pressured to join identi.ca where they are seeing all their other friends post from. I guess you could consider it competitive micro-advertising, created and distributed on purpose by the users themselves (as Charlene and Josh would put it, we’re seeing a “Groundswell“).

It should be noted that you can remove the “Identi.ca:” from being prepended, but as long as you’re on identi.ca and want those on Twitter to know you’re posting from there and not Twitter, why remove it? You are posting from the competing team, after all. Would anyone want to pretend they’re not posting from Twitter? I’d like to know where my friends are posting from.

Now, onto the viral part. Why did Brad Williams implement this bridge? I’m sure there are preferential issues of trying to get his network onto identi.ca, but the fact of the matter is, from a development standpoint these applications like Brad William’s bridge are simply easier to write for Identi.ca. The lack of limits and plan to keep off those limits on Identi.ca are just one more thing that make the software behind Identi.ca viral. Developers want to develop for Identi.ca. With an API that also supports Twitter (I mean literally, it is simply a change in the hostname for your Twitter code), developing for Identi.ca is just too easy! Again, developers jumping ship could very well mean the demise for Twitter.

I can only hope that developers of the future learn from this experience – in a social era such as today, even your software has to remain viral and easily shareable and distributable. Laconi.ca is the prime example of this – completely open source, based on open protocols, and your software should be able to talk to other instances of itself in some way, preferably using standard protocols. In addition to that, a completely open API is a must – the minute you start closing your API you begin to lose your code’s virality. Brad William’s bridge is only the start of apps that make the transition to Identi.ca much easier. I imagine you’ll see many more of these things in the coming days and weeks.

Looking to learn more on how to make the jump to identi.ca? Check out my friend, Marina Martin‘s site, ohidentica.com for some great howtos and tips all in one place. You can find me at http://identi.ca/jessestay.

Fire Signal Server – The Inspiration Behind Laconi.ca?

Posted on August 4, 2008 by jessestay

My good friend, Scott Lemon, made me aware of an interesting project underway that appears to possibly have been the inspiration behind Laconi.ca, the open source software behind the service, Identi.ca. The project is called “Fire Signal“, and is the brain child of Ron Whitman, the developer behind the Twitter Traffic alerts site, Commuter Feed.

Fire Signal appears to be a set of standards set out to encourage micro-blogging platform developers to build their systems in an open, distributed way. Identi.ca states that they are building off of Laconi.ca which is based on the “Open Microblogging Protocol“. Zenji Open Projects (Ron Whitman’s set of open standards) calls this protocol, “Fire Signal”. According to the Zenji Open Projects wiki,

“Fire Signal is an open protocol designed to allow users to publish and send short public and private messages of 160 characters or less across distributed web-based networks of Fire Signal Servers, the second initiative of this project. The concept behind this is commonly known by the term “micro-blogging”, popularized primarily by the web service Twitter and a growing number of competitors. “

According to the diagram presented on the same page, the concept looks amazingly like the concepts behind laconi.ca, with multiple content servers all sharing data between each other. I see no links to code on the project (it seems to be a standard only, similar to the micro blogging protocol identi.ca references), and Ron Whitman seems to be the only contributor, but the site does claim that laconi.ca is a working example of Fire Signal Server. It’s interesting that the laconi.ca website and openmicroblogging website make no mention of Fire Signal Server, nor does identi.ca.

It’s hard to tell if this was the origin of Laconi.ca or not, or if several ideas all began at once, and ended up having the majority of efforts focused towards the laconi.ca project, but if it is the inspiration, Ron Whitman deserves a lot more credit for his contribution now that identi.ca seems to be taking off by storm. If not, this does seem like an excellent new project to help out with – I hope the two projects could work together. I’m interested to find out more about the origins of this and how it relates to laconi.ca – this concept is truly the future of micro-blogging!

You can find me on identi.ca at http://identi.ca/jessestay, or follow all my updates throughout the web and discuss on http://friendfeed.com/jessestay.

UPDATE: Per Evan Prodromou, founder of identi.ca, and the Laconi.ca project, the two projects are indeed separate. Hopefully Ron Whitman can take his great ideas and contribute with the Laconi.ca cause now. It’s nice to see lots of great minds wanting such a standard!