socialmedian: Twitter will kick themselves for missing this (Scripting News)

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Twitter will kick themselves for missing this (Scripting News)

Submitted by Jasongoldberg

Aug 03, 2008

Summary

Imagine if the world of Instant Messaging had been under one roof, if one vendor had invented it, and had 100 percent market share. Further, what if that vendor had the foresight that there would be other vendors and that compatibility between their services would make a huge market, and that incompatibility would keep the market fragmented and relatively small. What would that vendor have done? Permalink to this paragraph

Now think about the opportunity that was before Twitter in 2007 and may even still exist in 2008, to do the same for micro-blogging. Imagine if Twitter had rolled out a blueprint for how to tie up a compatible micro-blogging service to Twitter's service, in such a way that I could use one vendor's service and you could use another, but somehow I could still follow you and you could follow me. That's the nirvana we're all seeking as new services come online and finally start attracting users. Permalink to this paragraph

I think it's good that Steve Gillmor is using Identi.ca as his micro-blogging home. Given the amount of enthusiasm he has for Twitter, I'm sure this decision didn't come quickly or easily. Me, I'm using FriendFeed these days, and to the extent I post to Twitter it's done by some bridge software I wrote that watches what I do on FF and posts new stuff automatically to Twitter. Permalink to this paragraph

When we move to different systems we're creating a mess, because there are differences in these systems (and that's good, I like the ways FF is different from Twitter and Identi.ca) so bridging them requires some thought, experimentation and consideration. I'm sure Steve would like to be able to communicate with people who use Twitter (can he?) but I can follow Steve fine over on FF, which has the ability to subscribe to feeds from other users. Permalink to this paragraph

I've had to turn off FF's monitoring of my Twitter feed, because it would catch "echoes" of messages my bridge sent to Twitter which then appeared a second time on FF. This meant having discipline to only use FF to post now. Anything I post on Twitter will not be seen on FF. Permalink to this paragraph

A picture named feelGreat.jpgThis is chaos but it's good, because now users are understanding the issues of federation, and will know a solution to the problems when they see it. Users can even participate in the discussion, because they are becoming so familiar with the problem. Permalink to this paragraph Read the full article

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