What I do NOT want is to trust the community I’ve built to a single company, same as I don’t want all email in the world routed through a single company. If Twitter can fix a spam problem then the Laconi.ca dev community can fix it, too. You’re still choosing whom to follow, so (unless I’m missing something) it would be a a bug if a spammer could send out spam blasts to unwilling users.

Is accessibility to the source really more important than scalability? As a long-time open source developer I’d say no, it’s not. An open API and a scalable and performant service is important. A solid architecture that can scale to handle millions of users and billions of messages is infinitely more important, and Laconica doesn’t have it.

Which is a better solution for your housing, me giving you the plans for building a 19th century log cabin, or me giving you a new, modern, up to code house without giving you the plans? I think the answer is obvious.

Just because something is open source doesn’t mean it’s going to scale better than anything else. But it certainly leaves the door open for improvement and innovation by anyone with the interest and skills, which is not the case with a closed microblogging platform. As is often the case, your idea of what process/featureset/etc. is best is going to be different from mine. I want choices without sacrificing my community.

I like @Zaskoda’s comparison to an IRC or email server. Email’s not perfect, but it [usually] gets there. That’s far more important than having email responses filtered into a form, which is an interesting idea but could largely be replaced today with a link to a Google form or a regular HTML form. Email itself doesn’t have to be the be-all, end-all if we use it in combination with other tools that achieve our means. If I have a survey, I can send a link to a form instead of expecting email to be a form processor for me, too.

I’m excited by Identi.ca and prefer to support something that I can personally contribute to and influence, if only in my own interactions with it.

I’m not completely sold on the “one message per person” aspect being the sole spam killer. Blog comments are one to one and comment spam is still an ongoing battle. So long as there’s an API, I think spammers will find a way to exploit Twitter in time. Honestly, I don’t think spammers see Twitter as a viable platform because of a couple of reasons. First, not a lot of people use Twitter, at least compared to he number of people who use e-mail and the Web. Second, Twitter users are early adopters who happen to be rather tech savvy. Tech savvy users are going to be far less likely to respond to spam. To this end, I don’t think Twitter has really experienced the hell of full on spammer attacks - yet.

To respond to you most significant point, these systems depend on the fact that they can see everybody. I think Wordpress is a good example in this case. I can download and install wordpress on my server and still get tied into systems such as the one that attached my avatar to this comment. It also gives the user or system admin the option of being part of an external system or not. So long as there’s a web interface that goes along with server installs, 3rd party apps could still harvest information the same way systems harvest from RSS feeds now. I do see your point, it’s much more viable to build extensions to a single system. However, how valuable are these 3rd party apps if the general populous decides to shift from Twitter over to Plurk? With no standard, everything has to be re-engineered.

To some degree, I’m playing devil’s advocate. Your points are very valid.

Yes, Email and IRC are stable… but what could they have been? What if you’d been able to easily define email forms that people could fill out and return? All of the things built on Lotus Notes were an attempt to turn Email into a more valuable business tool, but the standards made those innovations a lock-in to one platform (and a poor one at that). Those platforms are stable and locked into what they are because of standards. Standards are important, but only after the market is stable and mature. Premature standardization kills innovation and locks down the current implementation.

Believe me, I understand the issue of not being able to see other networks and their posts… It’s something I’m looking at and I’m working on a partial solution. It’s not something that requires a distributed model or a standard to solve.

I also understand open systems and open source… better than others in the Web 2.0 world from the ignorant posts I’ve seen touting it as a panacea. I’ve been an open source contributor for like 8 years, I’ve co-founded/run a successful open source project, etc. Open source means nothing for a web service, and especially when you’re re-implementing the same failed architecture you’re trying to replace.

One point you didn’t address is the biggest one, in my opinion, and that’s the inability to have the add-on value provided by 3rd party apps. With a distributed model there’s no Summize, Twitscan, etc. It becomes a lot less valuable when you can’t get the big picture.

http://webcraftstudios.com/blog/2008/06/27/call-distributed-open-twitter/

I might try to collect my thoughts and form a better reply as a post later, but in short… I’m still leaning towards the distributed model.

Just a note: when I think of twitter, I always think in an IRC direction and not in a micro blogging direction. To me, one of the key aspects affecting user experience is the ability to choose who you listen to - a white list of sorts. Otherwise, it’s a massive scale chat room.

Email, IRC, and blogs have all had to deal with spam. I’ve actually seen some slip through the cracks on Twitter and I know of folks looking for ways to exploit twitter in various ways - some white hat and other black. However, the “choose who you listen to” nature of Twitter - in my opinion - is a HUGE component in keeping the system relatively low noise… and not the fact that it is a closed system. I would love to see a deeper technical analysis of this.

Email hasn’t significantly evolved because it simply does not need to. It does exactly what it needs to do and it does it very well. It’s only because the platform is stable that software developers can reliably spend time evolving the clients that interface with it.

IRC and Email are stable platforms. Business can count on them to fill needs. I can deploy an irc server with a web interface for chat support on a website and know that the service will be stable. I can communicate with clients via email and feel confident that the service will work the way it is intended. Twitter… well, it’s a toy.

The business model discussion has come up from time to time. My immediate response is the existence of business models built around email. Just because the technology is free and open does not mean a business can not be built on it.

The true failure of the current state of microblogging (see, I’m catching on) is the diversity of platforms. If I’m on Twitter, you’re on Babelnote, and my sister is on Brightkite… none of us can talk to each other… Epic Fail… The system with the most users will eventually win, everyone else will go out of business, and the need to innovate will go away… no one will be able to touch the space because one service already dominates. This is exactly what happened when Microsoft killed Netscape… and the Web browser did not evolve until Firefox came on the scene. Market dominance through closed system always stifles innovation.

Finally, all other topics are really side items in my unimportant opinion. I believe in open ideas, open information, and open technology. This is it’s own discussion that is far too long for a blog comment. In my mind, I believe that it is not a matter of *if* the twitter concept goes open… it’s just a matter of *when*…