Prompt's TechBlog
@Identi.ca The new Twitter? Not yet.
28 July 2008
Posted by James Gerber
Identi.ca stormed onto the social media scene a couple of weeks ago as the open source microblogging alternative to Twitter. This happened amidst the dreaded Fail Whale continually appearing because Twitter's servers were constantly overloaded. It seemed to be the perfect fix, and yes, many people signed up for Identi.ca. Identi.ca was exploding and everyone was Twittering about it. It's a great idea to have a communal microblogging site developed by a community. So people started flocking to Identi.ca, if only to have a working microblogging platform.But then, Twitter bought Summize. And a strange thing happened, Twitter started becoming a lot more useful and solved a lot of its problems with downtime. When I first looked at Twitter, I noticed right away how crippled it was by not having a search engine on the site. Summize started as a search engine that offered users an easy way to follow conversations about topics posted on Twitter, complete with RSS feeds that gave people easy access to tweets on what they were interested in. Now that Twitter has integrated search into the program, it's even easier for users.
So, with the main reasons to switch to Identi.ca, the problems of search and downtime, gone, only open source purists will leave Twitter. Twitter still is free and has the largest community of microbloggers, who have remained dedicated even with the problems. The community behind Twitter will be the driving force in keeping also-rans, such as Identi.ca and Plurk at bay. At least until Twitter's cash runs out. The communications giant needs to figure out how to monetize the excellent traffic it gets, which so far has been elusive. I reserved my Identi.ca name, just in case.
Labels: fail whale, Identi.ca, microblogging, Plurk, Twitter
