Was there some kind of sale at Costco on "build a microblogging platform with PHP and MySQL/Postgres? - Cyndy

This isn't just that though Cyndy - his is also Federated, works with other Laconi.ca services (although it's not based on Laconi.ca), and he supports the Wordpress plugin and theme formats. His, in many ways is more extendible than Laconi.ca and will be more popular implementing amongst a more mainstream audience. - Jesse Stay

Jesse, see my previous commentary on the idea of a federated messaging system. - Cyndy

Where is that Cyndy? - Brad Nickel

Jesse, I take it you don't like any of the services that work on Twitter, since they won't work with a federated set of services... Also get ready to add spam filtering since it will be just like email... Oh, and do any of these support anything other than point-to-point federation? This whole idea is full of fail. - Jason Carreira

Brad, everywhere. ;) - Cyndy

What's next ... I'm all messaged out! - Charlie Anzman

THANK YOU JASON! Jesse, SHUT UP SHUT UP SHUT UP ABOUT IDENTI.CA. - Andrew Feinberg

Uh, this wasn't about identi.ca Andrew - Jesse Stay via twhirl

Jason, see my latest post on Louis Gray - I also run a service that supports Twitter so no I don't hate them. - Jesse Stay via twhirl

it's not identi.ca that Jesse's trying to explain to everybody. it's the spec. the fact that Evan P posted the spec weeks before his implementation is an example of an uncommon kind of selflessness, harkening back to the old days when things like gopher were being supplanted by more user-friendly protocols. and regarding spam, you only receive messages from those you subscribe to. - Brian Hendrickson

Brian, thanks - you hit the nail on the head. Even Twitter could implement this themselves if they want to. The spec is powerful, and the fact that people are sharing their code that implements this spec so others can use it is profound. - Jesse Stay via twhirl

Yeah, it's a bad spec for microblogging. It's a poor architecture for the requirements. Trying to compensate for the wrong architecture is what Twitter's been doing, and it doesn't work long term. - Jason Carreira

@Brian, who manages subscriptions? - Jason Carreira

Jason, that's because you have your own spec, isn't it? I'm sure Evan would be open to your input and contribution if you offered. - Jesse Stay via twhirl

@Jesse, I saw your post on threaded comments... is that what you meant to point me to? As to Twitter services, explain to me how a search like Summize or TweetScan, or a visualization app like Twittervision, or any of the other interesting services built on Twitter will work with a federated system... simple answer, they won't. - Jason Carreira

@Jesse, no I'm building my own app that can actually scale to handle millions of users in one system plus provide all of the aggregated data of a single system and provide for interesting business models to make money, both for my company and 3rd parties. - Jason Carreira

Jason give Evan's protocol some time - I think he sees that issue and it will work out over time. This is all new and we're still working out the quirks and figuring out what it should be. Evan's pretty open to community input and involvement and I'm sure he'd love to hear your advice and suggestions. He'd even let you step in to help if you wanted. - Jesse Stay via twhirl

Jason, tell me more about your system and protocol and I'd be happy to share that as well. I share the technology I think others should know about. If you have something profound show it to me and I'd be happy to take a look at it. Just don't criticize me for being preferential - I feature technologies I think are profound. - Jesse Stay via twhirl

@Jesse, no thanks... It's fundamentally flawed and ruins the value of Twitter over IM/Email. I wrote up my thoughts on the topic in July ( http://blog.babelnote.com/2008... ) and I'm more convinced than ever. - Jason Carreira

Jason, I've read that, but has Evan? - Jesse Stay via twhirl

@Jesse, there's no protocol. It's not federated. Microblogging is at an interesting crossroads between IM and Blogging... Twitter was founded by the former founder of Blogger and they missed on the architecture by making it too much like a CMS / Blogging platform, which doesn't scale for a messaging system. This federated XMPP spec misses too much on the IM side and loses the exponential value of centralized data and opens up the floodgates for abuse like we see in Email and IM. - Jason Carreira

I have no idea. I don't know Evan. - Jason Carreira

Jason, you should share that with him - shoot him a message on idetni.ca - he's @evan there and he's very open to discussion. Or you could also bring it up on the Laconi.ca developers mailing list and start the discussion there. You can join here: http://mail.laconi.ca/mailman... - Jesse Stay via twhirl

Feel free... I'm not joining any 2-tier database backed microblogging platforms... I've already got one of those and they at least have 2.5 million users, lots of tools, and $20+ million to throw at keeping the duct tape on there to keep it running. - Jason Carreira

Jason, you could always join the mailing list though - it sounds like you're not interested in attempting to fix the problem. A whole community is working to do so, and I'm sure they'd welcome your input. Let me know when you have something to show though and I'd love to take a look at what you've done. - Jesse Stay via twhirl

@Jesse, I AM solving the problem ;) I'm just not doing it in open source, I'm forming a company. - Jason Carreira

There's nothing wrong with that - if it's profound and interesting, I'm happy to share it, just as I did with Brian's OpenMicroBlogger - Jesse Stay via twhirl

@Jason people manage their own subscriptions just like Twitter and FriendFeed. In your comments you mentioned the business and innovation benefits of "aggregated data of a single system" and "exponential value of centralized data" and "millions of users in one system" but people want to be empowered to manage their own data, witness Wordpress. OpenID lets you make your own URL into a credential, and the OMB spec will let you make your own URL into a simple whitelisted messaging node. - Brian Hendrickson

So have we hit critical mass of too many microblogging platforms? Why doesn't everyone just make their own and everyone will have one? Would that be enough? - Ernie Oporto

@Brian But which end manages the subscription? The point being, can I create a badly-behaved XMPP/Microblogging node that spoofs subscriptions and sends out spam messages to big groups of users as if they'd subscribed? I believe the answer is yes... of course since the spec only allows for point-to-point relationships between services, the whole thing is only marginally useful anyway. - Jason Carreira

Hey, I'm excited about openmicroblogger.com. (Actually, I think the name is too close to openmicroblogging.org, but let's just skim over that.) Multiple implementations are the name of the game for any specification to be tried and true, so openmicroblogger is an awesome addition to the OMB network. I'm looking forward to seeing it develop, and working with Brian to make things work. - Evan Prodromou

The point of the exponential value of data is looking at all of the powerful tools that have sprung up around Twitter (many of which are dying off now because of Twitter's new API rate limitations). Those tools doing statistical analysis, providing interesting visualizations, and giving interesting real-time views of the Twitterverse are only possible because of the single aggregation of data. Think of the valuable stats and analysis Google can give you of their data.... - Jason Carreira

vs. the weak stats and analysis that can be generated across Google, Yahoo, etc. because you don't have all of the detail data, only the rollups. - Jason Carreira

@Jason good luck with your system. - Evan Prodromou

the current laconi.ca tracker works over xmpp accross all the laconi.ca instances. I don't understand why @jason thinks (and I read his longer post on the topic) the platform must be centralized. AOL anyone? - Robin Millette

Robin yeah - that's what this reminds me of - the whole AOL/Compuserve vs. the web debacle - Jesse Stay via twhirl

@Robin Tell me how Twittervision can work on Laconica. How can stats of the whole federated network be pulled? It's what you lose with a federated model. - Jason Carreira

Jason I think you're looking at it wrong. Twittervision isn't supposed to work on Laconi.ca, but they could certainly build versions of their system around each of the most popular implementations of Laconi.ca. Laconi.ca isn't a service, it's a technology. AOL/Compuserve == service. Web == technology. - Jesse Stay via twhirl

Without $20+ million to set up the infrastructure and organization, how will any Laconi.ca installs grow to a size big enough to make it worth it? PHP + DB 2 tier architectures do not scale linearly. - Jason Carreira

Jason, it's the distributed nature of it all, aka the Federation, that makes it worth it. It only takes 10 500,000 user installs of Laconi.ca to make a federated network that compares to Twitter. - Jesse Stay via twhirl

Jason, regarding money, see my post from 2 days ago on LouisGray.com - what if ESPN were to do their own cobranded version of Laconi.ca and provide a smaller micro-bloggins site for sports lovers? Busiensses like ESPN will be the major competition with Twitter at that point, and they have way more money than Twitter does and are profitable as well. - Jesse Stay via twhirl

And back to the topic, it's not just Laconi.ca that can be in the picture. Any system that supports the OMB protocol can be part of that network, so some actually could scale individually to the size of Twitter. Your own, commercial site could communicate via OMB with other OMB-supported microblogging sites. Twitter itself could support OMB, and I'm still banking they will whent hey get their gear in order. - Jesse Stay via twhirl

The initial premise of Google was to leverage the federated, distributed system that is the WWW. And while they will store your data, they don't really insist all that much upon it, as long as they can crawl it. And with OpenSocial and the social graph API stuff, it's more federation, even... (not speaking for Google, of course, just my lowly opinion) - Pierre Phaneuf

@Brian .. I really wonder outside of an extremely narrow focus of an already narrow field of Web 2.0 and social media just how many people give two craps about OpenID. I'm involved in this thing we call social media but as far as I am concerned OpenID is a convoluted mess that the average web surfer wouldn't know how to get started using if their life depeneded on it. - Steven Hodson

Steven it's obviously cared enough to be supported by the likes of Yahoo and Google and Facebook - I don't think I would consider that just the narrow field of Web 2.0. We're talking about hundreds of millions of users here. - Jesse Stay via twhirl

Steven you do have a point though - OpenID is still not simple enough for average users to fully understand. It must be much more seamless a process. - Jesse Stay via twhirl

@Steven @Jesse another cool Portland company, JanRain, can "shut up and code" for OpenID like no one else. I grabbed their OpenID server code and modified it: 1) "automatic return" brings you back to my sites after you leave to create a new OpenID 2) "log out" from my sites logs out of the OpenID server in the background 3) "log in" with an e-mail address and it will look-up your OpenID in the background. This stuff and more is live at http://openmicroblogger.com I plan to share the server source code. - Brian Hendrickson

@Steven what's a bigger convoluted mess, having to register at each and every Web site you use -- or making/using an OpenID? It's very easy from a programmer's perspective, that's indebatable. OpenID can do neat tricks like transfer your profile data to a site, or discover data and application endpoints when you log into a site. OpenID's cousin OAuth can be used to tap these endpoints cross-site, just check out Evan Prodromou's utterly simple use of XRDS and OAuth in his http://openmicroblogging.org spec. - Brian Hendrickson

@Jason you asked "which end manages the subscription" If I create a subscription to a remote site, that site asks mine for a "ticket" which allows it to post notices to my site. All of this is done with standardized security protocols (OAuth). When I delete the ticket at my end, no more notices arrive. And vice-a-versa. @Jason you said "can I create a badly-behaved [http://openmicroblogging.org] node that spoofs subscriptions and sends out spam messages? believe the answer is yes" Just circumvent OAuth and you're good to go for that, but from what i've seen that would not be easy at all. - Brian Hendrickson