Identi.ca Apps & Why It Could Blow Twitter Away

By Corvida

identica I’m on Identi.ca and I’m loving it. Discovered it via Marshall Kirkpatrick’s post on ReadWriteWeb (Identi.ca: May A Million Twitters Bloom). I’m also on the phone with Sarah Perez discussing what the latest verb for identi.ca will be. Yes, we’re true social media fanatics and yes every microblogging service needs a verb. You can follow me on identi.ca at http://identi.ca/corvida

Identi.ca is basically a great alternative to Twitter. The user interface is nice and simple just like Twitter. It’s like a Twitter clone with a bad name, but it’s open source unlike Twitter. So what’s bad about Identi.ca?

The community is small.
No way to track replies thus far
No groups
No direct messages
No easy way to follow people (suggested by Sarah Perez)
No client
No apps really

Future Features for Identi.ca

So, Identi.ca has a plans for tons of a ton of great features including:

SMS updates and notifications
A Twitter-compatible API
More AJAX-y interface
Maps
Cross-post to Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku, etc.
Pull messages from Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku, etc.
Facebook integration
Hashtags
Image, video, audio notices
Automatic url-shortening
Multilingual interface (using Gettext)

Get Replies in Identi.ca And More

So far there are a lot of people flocking over to Identi.ca. I managed to attract over 100 people in less than 5 hours and there’s more coming in. So for those that are already on here are some things you can try out to manage Identi.ca.

First, Identi.ca needs to get a replies tab ASAP! In the meantime, you can use this greasemonkey script that adds a reply button to the identi.ca UI. Works like a charm too. Also, Dawn aka geekygirldawn has created an identi.ca reply sniffer via Yahoo Pipes. You can subscribe to the feed for replies.

Also, Ping.fm has added integration for Identi.ca. That was fast!

Add Identi.ca to FriendFeed

If you want to add your rss feed to FriendFeed just grab your profile url and tack /rss at the end of it. (e.g. http://identi.ca/corvida/rss)

I’ll keep you posted on more as I hear about them and you’re more than welcome to leave a comment or email me (shegeeks [a] shegeeks/net) if you have an app in the works or know of one for identi.ca.

identica_reply

Why It Could Be The Next Twitter

blog Plain and simple, I’m developing a community on there, a community that is active on Twitter and identi.ca and are early adopters with related interests. In fact, I’ve been writing this post for some time now and I’ve been on the phone with Sarah Perez and sending messages to identi.ca and talking about identi.ca. People are itching for the community that they’ve created on Twitter to move elsewhere. So far, identi.ca is slowing soothing that itch. While it still has a long way to go, if Twitter doesn’t get its act together within the next month or two, identi.ca can definitely usurp it and I’m willing to bet my blog on that…almost. Check out more about Identi.ca with Sarah Perez’s latest post “Identi.ca Early Adopter Tips”.

Identi.Ca Gossip

Scobleizer, Scoble, Shel Israel, and 1938media usernames are being squatted on. I wonder if Techcrunch is being squatted on?

Identi.ca Verb

So Identi.ca needs a verb, not to mention a new name. So here’s a poll of suggested verbs (similar to “tweet” for Twitter”):

Identi.ca Finally Adds A Replies Tab!
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SheGeeks Debuts On ReadWriteWeb
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Tags: identi.ca, microblogging, open source, Twitter, web service
Topics: Social Media

Viewing 35 Comments

sean808080 4 months ago 1 point
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a great write up of the identi.ca. it's interesting to arrive to a new service with a list of assumptions of what is needed thanks to the bad experiences most of us have had with twitter.

for me, the killer feature that identi.ca must have over twitter if it's to be viable is the ability to scale without the dreaded fail whale. everything else is gravy.

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7 /people/sean808080/ /people/sean808080/following/ http://sean808080.com 554446096 in/seanhenriques sean808080 sean808080 sean808080

vdegeorge 4 months ago 1 point
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If it's the "twitter killer" then it just needs to hurry up and kill it, because I (and I suspect many others) simply don't have the time for follow multiple services, which many will have to do until everyone jumps over to identi.ca (if that even happens).

I feel like each time something like this comes like this it just causes more schmuggling (social media juggling) by everyone involved, which hurts the community overall.

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2 /people/vdegeorge/ /people/vdegeorge/following/ http://knobee.com 556178522 in/vincedegeorge vdegeorge vdegeorge vdegeorge vdegeorge

Vlad 4 months ago 1 point
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I think almost everyone agrees that taking microblogging the open source way is interesting and worth watching. But, in the mean time, someone please explain to me how it is you can build a community with no replies. This has potential, but is a pre-pre-alpha stage service imho. Now until it gets polished, if it ever will, why don't all of you flock to Jaiku? You know, that actually works and has, by far, the best support for conversations. And don't say it's closed. www.jaikuinvites.com FTW.

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1 /people/bvlad/ /people/bvlad/following/ http://www.s60online.com/ 531769476

Matt Terenzio 4 months ago 1 point
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Feel free to Try Twitter.IM if you normally get notifications from Twitter to GTalk. If you use the same GTalk account for Identi.ca it will aggregate and also post to/from both sites. ; )

http://twitter.im/register/

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http://twitter.im

BlueCockatoo 4 months ago 2 points
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Does the verb have to be something flashy? How about the simple, standard, easily groked term "post"? It's worked well for blogs, BBSes and snail mail for years.

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7 /people/BlueCockatoo/ /people/BlueCockatoo/following/ http://macrolinz.com 615260667 in/lindsayd BlueCockatoo Bluecockatoo Blue cockatoo

Earle Martin 4 months ago 1 point
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I was thinking "note" (140 characters is about as much as you could comfortably fit on a Post-It). "Post" has a strong established meaning for a longer piece of text.

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2 /people/downlode/ /people/downlode/following/ http://downlode.org/

Corvida 4 months ago 1 point
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But there's something fun about a community having its own lingo.

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49 /people/Corvida/ /people/Corvida/following/ http://shegeeks.net in/corvida shegeeks

Julian Baldwin 4 months ago 1 point
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Simply agree.

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5 /people/julianbaldwin/ /people/julianbaldwin/following/ http://julianbaldwin.com/blog 8110281 jbaldwinconnect jbaldwinconnect

n8k99 4 months ago 1 point
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nice work again!

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10 /people/n8k99/ /people/n8k99/following/ http://eckenrodehouse.net 729545642 in/nathaneckenrod n8k99 n8k99 n8k99

xavierv 4 months ago 1 point
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Well it doesn't seem like the platform foundation is working that good. But whichever PR agency is behind this (I have my idea), they sure got a lot of people enthusiastic about identi.ca.

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3 /people/xavierv/ /people/xavierv/following/ http://hyveup.com 703916652 in/xavespa xavierv

marcuhlig 4 months ago 1 point
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i was wondering about the pr too, the service is definitely not as great as the hype it currently gets, there is better stuff out there... what do you think, who is behind this pr campaign?

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http://www.jupiter-labs.com

Earle Martin 4 months ago 1 point
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Guys, as a friend of Evan, whose service Identi.ca is, and an early tester, I can tell you for a fact that it's entirely word of mouth. I've been amazed at the good buzz that everyone's generated, and I don't think he expected quite this much, either.

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2 /people/downlode/ /people/downlode/following/ http://downlode.org/

marcuhlig 4 months ago 1 point
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ok, so why does it get the buzz, while the other hundred 'twitter killers' don't. it's not the quality of the app, see my comment below, others are far more promising, at least imho... i don't believe in miracles...

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http://www.jupiter-labs.com

Magnus 4 months ago 1 point
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The site has fallen over dead. So at least it has successfully copied *that* particular feature from Twitter.

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http://viridari.wordpress.com

Herb 4 months ago 1 point
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Speaking of scalability, it's already painfully slow! What will happen as more and more sign up to check it out?

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1 /people/hherbzilla/ /people/hherbzilla/following/ http://hherbzilla.blogspot.com/ hherbzilla hherbzilla hherbzilla

marcuhlig 4 months ago 1 point
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i like identi.ca because its open source, written in php, and easy to hack. but my guess is that it won't be very scalable either, so we have the twitter problem again. neither php nor ror were developed to handle such a messaging service, the only real alternative is twoorl and i don't understand why there is not more hype about this erlang app.

this one would actually have the potential to become a twitter killer, imho...

http://twoorl.com/home
http://code.google.com/p/twoorl/
http://github.com/yariv/twoorl/tree/master

btw, my identi.ca account is here:

http://identi.ca/marcuhlig/

cheers

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http://www.jupiter-labs.com

Jean-Marc Liotier 4 months ago 2 points
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This is not only about Identi.ca but rather about Laconi.ca of which Identi.ca is just the reference deployment. In spite of all its functional shortcomings, Laconi.ca is the embryo of a truly open microblogging network based on federation. It is still HTTP polling, so the scalability problems shown by Twitter are still there, but at least it is open so that will be fixed. The Identi.ca roadmap advertises plans for polling and posting to Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku, Facebook etc. - so I would infer without having looked at the code that it has at least some support for modularity at the transport level. This means that future development of a XMPP publish-subscribe transport used in parallel to the proprietary protocols is probably possible. If Laconi.ca provides the Web user interface, the connectivity to proprietary networks and enough buzz to recruit a critical mass of users, that is a great start ! We’ll soon see if XMPP publish-subscribe can make that party even better.

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http://serendipity.ruwenzori.net/

Pierro 4 months ago 1 point
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yupp - nice post, im not sure, but you can use ping.fm with Identi.Ca too.

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http://www.konterfai.com

justavo 4 months ago 1 point
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This is a good link, actually AFAIK, the first post about identi.ca

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1 /people/justavo/ /people/justavo/following/ http://justavo.blogsome.com/ 676994883 in/justavo justavo justavo justavo

justavo 4 months ago 1 point
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http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/indentica_...

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1 /people/justavo/ /people/justavo/following/ http://justavo.blogsome.com/ 676994883 in/justavo justavo justavo justavo

TheMacMommy 4 months ago 1 point
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you rawk! thanks for this! :)

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2 /people/TheMacMommy/ /people/TheMacMommy/following/ http://www.themacmommy.com themacmommy