I Might Leave Twitter for Identi.ca

July 2, 2008 by 11 Comments

This morning I heard about Identi.ca and decided to check it out. It’s a microblogging service that’s obviously been inspired by Twitter. But… and this is a big but… it’s open source and distributed.

The website itself is a little rough around the edges but is quite functional. I’ve been using the service for less than 12 hours and I’m ready to dump Twitter if a lot of my network does the same. I’ve been following my Identi.ca stream using XMPP through Pidgin or the Google Talk client on my Blackberry and the service has been rock solid.

If you check out the FAQ, you’ll find several “coming soon” features, which will make things even nicer.

I’m ready to move to Identi.ca. The big thing missing for me is… you. A lot of the PDX scene has joined (and added me… if you haven’t, I’m aaron on Identi.ca) but it seems folks are still posting mainly on Twitter. Join me in making the move.

[tags]identica, identi.ca, twitter, microblogging[/tags]

Filed Under: General Info ·
  • http://jmartens.myvidoop.com/ Jmartens

    Identi.ca is really promising. However, we can’t judge their stability yet. Late this afternoon, the create (@evan) posted a comment that the site was up to just under 1,800 users. Not exactly enough to measure scalability.

    You are right, the open source/distributive part of it is the key.

    I will say that identi.ca is the first of the twitter clones that I think could actually kill twitter. It’s clean, easy to use but still looks good, and it works!

  • http://www.anotherblogger.com Aaron B. Hockley

    You’re right Jeff, Identi.ca is definitely under a MUCH lighter load than Twitter. I’m not saying that Identi.ca is the solution to all of Twitter’s ills, but a) it was designed to scale by distribution and b) over the past 12 hours, it’s been a hell of a lot more stable than Twitter.

    I’m being optimistic and hoping it turns out to be all that I hope it will :)

  • http://siliconflorist.myvidoop.com/ Rick Turoczy

    Completely concur with the “the more the merrier” sentiment. Let’s give this a run and see if it might be what we’ve been seeking.

    Add SMS updating and a client of some sort (in addition to getting folks over there) and that would likely seal the deal for me.

  • http://moblog-banditben.blogspot.com Ben Bradley

    I’m tossing my hat in with identi.ca, not putting all my eggs in one basket, but it seems like a great new solution.

    Only one criticism though – MAKE IT EASIER TO ADD FRIENDS!

  • http://identi.ca/evan Evan Prodromou

    I think scalability is key, but I also believe that as Knuth said, “premature optimization is the root of all evil”. I’m going to be working over the next few days to get performance up to snuff, and then going after some of the low-hanging feature requests (reply button, anyone?). I’m glad identi.ca has captured the Web community’s imagination.

  • http://jmartens.myvidoop.com/ Jmartens

    Great work, Evan….I’m more excited about identi.ca than any other web service right now.

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  • http://siliconflorist.myvidoop.com/ Rick Turoczy

    Tris Hussey really brought this whole thing to light with his comparison to POP mail.
    http://www.mapleleaftwo.com/identica-canadas-gift-to-microblogging-and-might-become-twitters-salvation/

    We need to set up a server or two here in Portland… err Vancouver. Or. Well, you know what I mean. In the Silicon Forest somwhere. To help with the scaling issues.

    Distributed? Just what we needed!

  • fross

    I am willing to try it, but I just can’t figure out how to set it up on my BB. I can go direct on the net, but I would prefer to run it thought my Google Talk Client as the guy above stated. Yet, I am not as tech wise as he. Can someone explain how to do the set up.

    • http://www.anotherblogger.com Aaron B. Hockley

      On Identica, you’ll need to configure your Gmail account for IM delivery. I don’t recall the exact steps but it involves adding the Identica jabber account as a contact, then it’ll send you a code to activate the service, then you should see it as a contact (and be able to post/receive dents via an IM client such as the Blackberry Google Talk client).

  • http://rbravo.net Reinaldo Bravo

    The nice thing about identi.ca is the tabs used in the account page. You can view personal posts, replies from others, your favourite posts. Being able to suscribe to groups as well as tagging your own profile are great features. The search options are great. Either people, posts or groups.

    The community on there at the moment is perhaps more technical based. This makes the public post page interesting to read from time to time.

    Open-source was the selling point for me (and what separates itself from other twitteresque apps). Now that I have used it, I find it to be the most practical solution to micro-blogging. It might not have a big range of third party apps but you can post onto there from other services.