Identi.ca Apps & Why It Could Blow Twitter Away

Jul 03 2008 Comments

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       
    identica

     
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”):


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  • williamgeorge
    Now is the perfect time to release, when Twitter is failing, and people are looking for refuge. Also, it’s open source, which means the best and the brightest software engineers in the world will have a chance at creating a scalable, decentralized Twitter clone. Even on Day 0, so much happened. There was an issue with RSS that people pointed out when importing to other services like Friendfeed, and evan fixed it within an hour. There were no Replies, so people took it onto themselves to write a Greasemonkey script and a Yahoo Pipe. Many people already started looking at the code.
    =======
    george
    foreclosures
  • Looks scary. Twitter better get their act together before they get bumped out of the way.
  • SEO
    Twitter has already becoming a habit for many social media addicts out there. It will be difficult to kick Twitter out of the market, moreover Identica is simply a cloneof Twitter and has lesser features too.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • 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.
  • mterenzio
    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/
  • 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.
  • Hex
    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.
  • But there's something fun about a community having its own lingo.
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