Scripting News

Feature suggestion for Twitter

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 17:28:24 GMT

"Like" Is a FriendFeed feature that Twitter should have. It's a misnomer, it's not about liking something. When you like something that means you recommend it. Everyone who follows you gets the recommendation.

How it would work in Twitter.

1. You're reading something I wrote in Twitter.

2. You say you "like" it -- which is like adding it to your Favorites (same UI).

3. It goes on your output stream. All the people who follow you see it too.

People are doing this manually now -- "retweeting" -- but this is one click and the system remembers where it came from. If it were possible to hang stuff off a tweet (as it is in FF) then there would only be one place.

Twitter should have this. It's a very important feature.

PS: From now on when I say something should be in Twitter, it should also be in all Twitter clones, for now that's identi.ca.

PPS: I'm sure Twitter-only people are sick of hearing it, but FF has mystical qualities that I'm not sure anyone fully appreciates. It reveals little bits of itself to you slowly over time. Not sure it's always the best way, but it's like a puzzle, a story that you want to know how it will turn out. You can't get it from a quick look, you have to immerse yourself in it. Not saying everyone should, but I'm glad I did.

PPPS: I'm started to develop systems on top of FriendFeed that I initially thought I would develop on Twitter. Their reliability and performance make it thinkable, where Twitter has become flaky, not only technically, but also in the way it deals with developers. Could happen with FF too, but then my fallback is identi.ca, where worse comes to worse, I could operate my own net.

PPPPS: I am however using identi.ca for something I thought I would use Twitter for. As a lightweight identity system. For the project I'm working on, I'm requiring users to have an identi.ca login. This little thing has huge implications in the identity space. A lightweight low-security login that's accessible via API, it's something I've been asking Google and Yahoo to do for ages. They can't seem to wrap their minds around it. Along comes identi.ca and boom, problem solved.

Mini-blog posts

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 14:55:19 GMT

I never agreed that Twitter is what some people call a micro-blogging service. Just didn't feel much like blogging to me. But FriendFeed is another story. I am using it more like a blogging tool than Twitter. For example...

1. Yesterday I snuck out to see the new Batman movie on its opening day. I wrote my first review on FF. In the morning (now) I have more thoughts. If Heath Ledger hadn't died, and if there were two other big performances like his, it might have been on the same level as The Departed, and that's high praise. The other characters and the actors who portrayed them weren't anywhere near as interesting as Ledger's Joker, who unlike Nicholson's or Romero's -- wasn't funny, at least not in the normal way. He is a pathetic character, wonderfully pathetic. Really something to see. So my first impression last night was pretty lukewarm, but after a few hours it seems more masterful. You could have cut out most of the other scenes and made a movie just about the Joker and that would have been great. Too bad Ledger died. He was becoming a really fine actor.

2. As you may know I bought a cute little Windows laptop on impulse the other day. It was a good move. And on FF last night I asked for help networking it with my Macs. Glad i bought it. Gotta keep up on what the other guys are doing. Apple has been doing pretty well, the iPhone was risky, and they pulled it off, not easy to do. Microsoft usually takes three tries to get it right, Apple got it right the first time. But in ultra-portable laptops, Apple isn't cutting it. This little EEE PC thing is a marvel. There are some really crappy things about it, like the uncontrollable trackpad and the keypad is tiny, and squinting at the tiny screen hurts my eyes, but it really is a joy of a product. If only it ran Mac OS.

What about blogging?

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 14:44:00 GMT

Publishing keeps getting cheaper.

That's been the constant push, the practical application of Moore's Law in my neck of the woods. I've always been a publishing guy, and that's always been how I viewed computers, and it's why I got into them in the first place.

Most people don't get this, the real story of blogging is just the continuation of the process. You could just have easily focused on the laser printer, Aldus Pagemaker and local area networking in the 1980s, or the web browser and Netscape in the 1990s. Blogging is the leading edge in publishing in the first decade of this century.

Here's what Clay Shirky says on the subject. "Forget about blogs and bloggers and blogging and focus on this -- the cost and difficulty of publishing absolutely anything, by anyone, into a global medium, just got a whole lot lower. And the effects of that increased pool of potential producers is going to be vast."

Well put, and definitely worth passing along.

Go read Marc's post now

Sat, 19 Jul 2008 05:06:18 GMT

Highly recommend this post by Marc Canter, it's filled with ideas. Much the same as my thinking. I have a post planned for tomorrow or Sunday that should blow out some assumptions about identity and federating these micro-blogging services. Low-tech, worse is better, re-use what's already out there, as Marc says it's all happening now, and I'm loving the way it's turning out.

Twitter connects to Gnip

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 18:16:57 GMT

More movement in micro-blogging!

Recall that Gnip is a ping syndicator, sort of weblogs.com on steroids. Not the simplest of APIs, but apparently quite powerful. I tried to get some code running with it, but hit a hard wall that I couldn't get past. No matter, others are successfully adapting to Gnip.

I just read this announcement on Twitter from Eric Marcoullier pointing to a TechCrunch piece. Eric says: "It's official: Twitter is pushing to Gnip and Gnip is pushing it the fuck out to everyone!" But this is kind of contradicted in the TC piece, which says you can only get updates from users you specify. You can't connect up on the same (firehose) basis that Summize was connecting before they were acquired by Twitter (earlier this week).

Like I said: So much movement. (There's more coming.)

One thing's for sure is that being open to developers is very much a competitive issue. This is why two-party systems work in technology and one-party systems stagnate. Why, when Netscape dominated browsers nothing moved, and it was fun while Microsoft and Netscape were competing, and why we returned to stagnation when Netscape folded, and why it's once again interesting now that Firefox is flourishing. Same thing in the competition betw Twitter and identi.ca.

When I talked with Evan Prodromou yesterday he said they would open up their XMPP back-end to anyone and everyone without limits. Now it's up to them to make good on that, and this shoudl give Twitter the incentive to go all the way with Gnip. BTW, Gnip should be agnostic, they should work with identi.ca as well as with Twitter.

Identi.ca implements the Twitter API

Fri, 18 Jul 2008 13:56:36 GMT

Recall that identi.ca is an open source Twitter-like "micro blogging" service. When it appeared, earlier this month, I wrote: "First thing --> looking for an API." I wanted to see an implementation of the Twitter API, so that all the code that I had written for Twitter would automatically work with identi.ca.

Being compatible with Twitter is the developer-friendly thing to do, it means we will only have one code base to maintain. It's good for users, because they have choice, they can use either Twitter or identi.ca, and not have to make a choice on tools. It's good for identi.ca because they instantly get a base of apps that work with their service. I'd argue that it's even good for Twitter, because it helps to solidify a standard with them as the market leader. The second guy into a market sets the standard, by ratifying the API designed and deployed by the first to market, who is in this case, obviously, Twitter. Had identi.ca blazed their own trail and made an API that did what Twitter's did, but was gratuitously incompatible, everyone would have suffered. Too often in the tech business, this is what happens, even though it's such a disrespectful and non-optimal thing to do.

Yesterday I got an email from Evan Prodromou at identi.ca saying that they had implemented the Twitter API; he asked if I would test my apps against their implementation. I did, and I'm happy to report that I was able to run all my code, unmodified, except for substituting identi.ca/api where ever twitter.com appears in an address. That's what I call compatible! It all "just worked" (so far, knock wood, I am not a lawyer, Murphy-willing, etc).

So we can check a very important item off identi.ca's to-do list. Next items: 1. Allow any developer to hook into the full flow of identi.ca through XMPP, and 2. Demonstrate interop across a federation of identi.ca deployments.

See also: The docs for the "Twitter-compatible API."

See also: How to think about identi.ca, Plan B.

Checking out the Asus

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 21:32:01 GMT

Here are the photos from the unboxing of my new Asus.

I like it -- it's fun getting a new tech toy.

Most irritating thing about it is the way the trackpad works. Hesitating while positioning the cursor is interpreted as a click. This has already resulted in wrong information being transmitted to Netflix, the default name being given to the computer (something really convoluted). I have to figure out how to turn this off or it's going to screw with my using all the other computers I use.

On FriendFeed, Kevin Tofel suggested looking for a Trackpad control panel. I did, but...

1. There is no Trackpad control panel, and no Trackpad settings in the Mouse CP. 2. There is a feature called ClickLock, which appears to be the cause of this horrible feature. 3. However it was not checked by default. 4. I checked it and chose Settings and set the delay to the longest possible value. 5. Seems to have fixed the problem. 6. As usual in Windows, you have to lie to make it work properly.

Apple's walled garden

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 13:31:51 GMT

Nik over at TechCrunch wrote a post yesterday where he wondered why people who love open systems and open source are willing to wait in line for an iPhone 3G which is one of the most closed systems ever. And why they're willing to use software from the Apple store, a store you can't get into if Apple doesn't want you there. These are good questions.

So far I have no interest in iPhone apps, and I haven't bought an iPhone 3G, though I have upgraded to iPhone 2.0. I never unbricked my phone, and I still think of iPhone apps as web apps, just like Steve told me to in the early days when I wanted an API and an SDK. I got in the habit of thinking of it as a phone and nothing more.

My iPhone's camera is broken. The iPod never worked (I hate earbuds and none of my headphones fit their non-standard jack and buying an adapter would be ridiculous for me, I'd have to buy 5 cause I lose little chotchkas like those adapters.) It played videos for the first few weeks, then no matter what I did iTunes refused to copy videos on to the phone. Paying the price for Apple's paranoia that says the only way to move stuff back and forth to the iPhone is through their software. I could write my own scripts, and would be happy to. The damned thing should just look like a disk drive when you plug it into a Mac. (I know I know there are ways to trick it into being that, but I have no patience.)

The address book still works, and the phone, and that's about all that I care about. I carry a huge PowerMac with me when I travel, but I'd consider replacing it. Developers tell me that soon, in an upcoming software update the OPML Editor, which I depend on for all my work, will break unless we get cracking on it. That's so Apple. As a developer you have to keep spending money just to stay in place.

Somehow for some reason buying into the Apple culture has been something I've resisted, where some people embrace. I won't wait in a line, or oooh and ahhh at a Stevenote. I just don't like the smarmy marketing attitude of Apple, he's kind of like the teacher's pet in music class, pretending that he's a connoisseur -- I see flaws and bugs everywhere. Fix the bugs and STFU about how great the product is. Sorry. I want to use Apple's products the same way I use a Canon camera, as a product I respect, but if they ever start screwing around the way Apple does, I'd switch to a Nikon or whatever. Problem is there is no Nikon or whatever in PCs and iPods. All the other products suck. Hugely. Apple's just suck a bit less. Not a huge accomplishment for an industry, imho.

Anyway, over the years I've got to watch platforms that work and ones that don't. The ones that work usually only work for a short while, then something happens that screws it up.

In order for a platform to work, the owner of the platform has to be a provider; the developers compete to create wonders for the platform. After all these years the platform as Chinese household model still seems the right one to me. Developers make babies. The husband (the vendor) provides the house, food, and pays the utility bills. In Steve Jobs's Apple, it's all screwy. The vendor makes the babies and the developers make little cupcakes they can sell to people who come to admire the babies. A lot of people love the babies, so in theory it's possible to make good money selling cupcakes.

But starting and running a cupcake stand isn't really what gets most developers up in the morning.

All I can say is that Nik is right, it's ridiculous, and people who believe in open systems who bet heavy on such a closed system are going to learn again why they love open systems.

BTW, this is why I have a blog, so I can write pieces like this. I'm not running for office. Don't vote for me!

I got this at SnagFilms

Thu, 17 Jul 2008 05:32:17 GMT

A new JibJab!

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 05:00:01 GMT

Send a JibJab Sendables® eCard Today!

Yeah of course it's about the oil and that's all it's about

Wed, 16 Jul 2008 03:53:04 GMT

Watching Obama give his big Iraq speech today, I told myself a joke that got me laughing so hard, I couldn't stop. Maybe you'll enjoy it too.

Imagine Obama looking into the camera saying "Fuck it, we all know why Bush and McCain want to stay in Iraq. All this talk about waiting for this or that to happen -- it's all bullshit, they know it, I know it, the press knows it, and if you think about it you know it too."

We're not going to leave Iraq because if we did, it would become a province of Iran. It's pretty close to being that now, even with 150K American troops camped out in bases spread through the country. The President, Maliki, is Iranian (for all practical purposes). Al Sadr is Iranian. The only guys who aren't Iranians are the remnants of Saddam's government and the guys we call evildoers who call themselves Al Qaeda. They're all equally evil, and we're no better. We fucked that country, hard, killed huge numbers of Iraqis, wrecked the country. The Arab world will be cursing us for a long time for what we did to Iraq, and we'll deserve it.

If we pull out, Iraq and Iran will merge, combine the countries with the 2nd and 3rd largest oil reserves, and a huge army, run by people who are serious and they're not the idiots the Republicans keep portraying them as. They're astute politicians, much more sophisticated than Bush or McCain. In the game of chess they're playing with the US, a country that's many times its size, they're pretty close to taking our queen.

The American president who leaves Iraq is going to be blamed for the oil debacle that's coming (even so, it'll be unrelated to Iran taking over Iraq). $4.50 a gallon is nothing. It's going to get a lot worse. Everyone knows it, that's why the stock market is tanking, why there are runs on the banks, why the govt is furiously printing money to shore them up, which only feeds more inflation.

The lines at banks with people waiting to draw out all their money aren't being shown on TV, cause if everyone knew what was going on the panic would likely turn into a 1929-like collapse.

Outside the US no one wants to call us on our bullshit because we have this huge army, navy, air force, with aircraft carriers, bases all over the world, and an unbelievably huge stockpile of nuclear weapons. If we get scared enough we might just use em. That's the only reason the Saudis are willing to still meet with Cheney, and why they keep sending us oil which we pay for with dollars that they all know are a joke.

Obama knows this. He can't leave Iraq and he won't. Of course McCain won't either. He was actually telling the truth when he said we'd be there for 100 years. We will, if we can. Obama can't and won't change that.

If Obama really meant to leave Iraq, he would have looked into the camera today and said: "Look, it's all about the oil, it has nothing to do with terrorism." Of course if he said that he wouldn't even get the Democratic nomination and his political career would be over. Telling the truth about the terrible strategic position the US finds itself in is not a good idea. Get the votes some other way.

We're going to need a new infrastructure, lots more mass transit, all our cars are obsolete. It's expensive, and we have some unique problems. It's a huge country. Getting from one coast to the other isn't ever going to be cheap again. Is our military mighty enough to get the rest of the world to give us enough credit to make the transition? Is our population resilient enough to put up with the hardship that's coming without demanding more wars to take oil by force from the Indians, Chinese, Brazilians, Russians? (And come on, some of them have big armies too and nukes.)

See, that's the joke. We all know it's about the oil, we want the oil, we're taking it by force and we know it, no one wants to say it, and no one is complaining.

BTW, this is why I have a blog, so I can write pieces like this. I'm not running for office. Don't vote for me!

Instant history

Mon, 14 Jul 2008 03:18:46 GMT

The campaign was getting pretty dull until this New Yorker cover appeared.

At once funny, provocative and inspiring, it captures the personalities of the two Obamas, and how the Republicans would probably like us to think of them.

I don't think there's any doubt that this cartoon cover is one of the icons of our times. That's how powerful art can be.

Larger scan of the cover, and the Ryan Lizza article behind it.

Foreclosures in your neighborhood?

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 14:40:30 GMT

Next week the financial crisis in the US reaches a new level with a major bank failure and two others being bailed out.

There's lots of macro news, but what about your neighborhood? Are people losing their homes? Many For Sale signs? If so, are they selling? How do you feel about your investment in your home, in your town? We don't talk much about this in the tech blogosophere, life here pretty much goes on as it always has, but I'm wondering if underneath that, there's lots that's changing.

As far as my neighborhood, North Berkeley, goes -- I bought my house at the absolute peak of the market. According to zillow.com my house has dropped 10 percent in 2 years. A pretty terrible investment from that point of view (I love the house and the neighborhood, so I'm happy). Even though property values are dropping fast, there aren't many For Sale signs, and when they appear, they sell quickly. There don't appear to be any foreclosures, all houses are being maintained as far as I can see. So the crisis hasn't hit the East Bay yet, even though I hear other parts of California are being hit hard.

Update #1: Follow the discussion on FF.

Update #2: This blog is focusing on the mortgage meltdown.

A demo of something that's not crowd sourcing

Sun, 13 Jul 2008 16:23:42 GMT

To Jay Rosen, here's an example of two people collaborating to make an interesting story that neither of us would likely make on our own. Notice that nothing like "crowd sourcing" is taking place.

When I was flying back from NY last Wednesday, the plane was equipped with a live Google Maps display so I could see in advance that our path was likely to take us over Denver, so I prepared, and took several pictures as we passed over the south side of the city. When I got home I uploaded one of the pics to Flickr along with several others.

Then, unexpectedly, yesterday, a person named Paul Wicks added an interesting caption to my picture in a comment. I learned a lot about what I had flown over.

See, we're not acting as a crowd -- we're acting as two curious strangers from (presumably) fairly diverse backgrounds (I have no way of knowing) whose paths crossed and were able to make an intellectual exchange thanks to a collaborative service. No one made any money off it, but something good happened anyway.

For another example, see my piece earlier today asking people for their experiences with foreclosures locally. When it's "done" if it ever is, I'd say it'll be as good as any story written for a national newspaper on how the foreclosure crisis is hitting the average American. In one way it's better -- no one edited the sources' words, we're getting it straight, no "telephone game" errors introduced (which is why sources say they never are quoted accurately in the press, something reporters always deny, funny how that is).

Update: A podcast to go with this post.

Obama's FISA screwup

Sat, 12 Jul 2008 15:55:07 GMT

First, the conservative pundits who say that Obama turned his back on the extreme left by voting for the new FISA bill have it wrong. He turned his back on people of all persuasions who believe in our form of government.

This was a fight he should have welcomed, one that could have provided substance to this election, instead of playing a superficial game of percentages and gotchas and gaffes, it could have rallied people, brought the revolutionary spirit onto the streets.

If you recall our country was founded in revolution. The problem is we don't recall. Some of us hoped (there's that word again) that Obama would lead us some place worth going.

He was right if he assumed he had our vote. I will not vote for McCain to prove this point. But I'm also not going to give him any more money. I'm going to save that for causes I believe in.

I no longer believe there is a cause to Obama other than getting Obama elected. It's up to him now to prove otherwise. The FISA vote can be undone, but he has to actually do the undoing.

Update: Follow the discussion on FF.

Why I don't like 'crowd sourcing'

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 18:37:50 GMT

On Twitter, Jay Rosen asks why I don't like the term crowdsourcing. (He says hate, but that's way way too harsh.) Anyway, he's right -- I don't like it -- because it betrays a not-useful point of view. I am not part of a crowd, I am an individual, I'm a one man band by the quick lunch stand, playing real good for free. When you mash us all together you miss the point.

I don't like it cause it's cheap, it's always used by people who want something for nothing.

Tell me Jay, how does your wife feel when you tell her she's part of the crowd you were thinking of marrying.

If you want people to like you, and who doesn't, try seduction. Don't tell us about your greed, say how much you love and respect our individuality our originality.

Bottom-line: I don't think of myself as part of a crowd when I write on the Internet. When you describe me that way I don't like it.

I don't like it for the same reason I never liked "The Long Tail." The person using the term is never in the long tail, he or she is the head! It's the rest of us that are in the tail. Well excuse me but I'm riding up front with you. Been locked in the trunk many times by Microsoft, Netscape and Apple. It sucks!

One more reason -- it's not useful because it doesn't actually model what's going on. In the 20th century everything was about mass markets and centralization. You could explain things with concepts like crowds. In this century we're going the other way. The technologies push us there in a positive way, because the cost of communication is so low it doesn't need to be financed by moguls the way printing presses and TV stations were. And in a negative way because while our desire for information is increasing, the ability of professionals to provide it is decreasing. So we have to fill the gaps ourselves.

Hope this helps.

PS: I didn't reply on Twitter cause 140 chars is way too limiting for an idea like this.

PPS: I have even more to say, the industry you cover keeps trying, even clutching desperately to an idea that we can go back to the world they grew up in. It's not going to happen, imho. Better to accept things as they are and try to figure out how to make the best of it, for all of us. My own industry got decimated by the forces at work in publishing, so I've been through it. I'm still here, knock wood. But no one gets to have it easy. And the individuals you want to turn back into a crowd won't go for it, also imho.

Another tale of woe of Apple

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 17:00:41 GMT

These monolithic, upgrade the world in a day rollouts of Apple may not be such a great idea. And this is a reminder to myself never to be tempted by them.

Lured into the iPhone 2.0 rollout timed to happen the same day as the iPhone 3G rollout and a day after the rollout of the new app store, I decided to updgrade my 1st-gen iPhone (purchased on June 29 last year) and fell into the same brick-hole as have many other iPhone users.

Surprise, the store couldn't handle the traffic. Sound familiar? Same thing happened last year.

Oy. This should the last monolithic shake-the-world rollout Apple does. Apple makes serious products that people use seriously. The idea that so many people lost their phones on the day of the rollout is just plain unacceptable.

Anyway, you can follow my travails here and here.

And I may not be shit-out-of-luck. I forgot I have a trusty and boring Nokia N95 here that should work, its only problem is its battery is run down. I've got it plugged into my wall socket, which thanks to PG&E still works, even though Apple is rolling out its wonderful new world-changing products today.

Update: Persistence pays off. Keep your iPhone plugged in, power it off, power it on, wait for it to fail. If it doesn't you're done. If it does, repeat.

Good afternoon from California

Thu, 10 Jul 2008 20:04:00 GMT

I'm back in California, feeling pretty good.

Listening to the original version of For Free by Joni Mitchell from Ladies of the Canyon. There's a later version from the live album -- Miles of Aisles, but I like the original better.

The one man band by the quick lunch stand. He was playing real good for free. Nobody stopped to hear him, though he played so sweet and high. They knew he had never been on their TV, so they passed his music by. I meant to go over and ask for a song, maybe put on a harmony. I heard his refrain as the signal changed. He was playing real good for free.

Everyone is so confused about blogging. You don't blog to build an audience or have a conversation. You blog because you have something to say. There's nothing more to it.

I saw the story about the librarian who wasn't allowed to wait for a McCain event because she held a sign with a political message, a subtle one, a thought-provoker. She was playing real good for free, her instrument was our political system, but the cops passed her good music by.

When you put on your plastic lapel pin, you should think about the Government of the People, by the People and for the People -- people playing real good for freedom.

McCain could give a speech about that librarian, that would be truly impressive. Here's something he can fix right now. Tell the people who watch the people lining up to let people express their political thoughts, esp those who do it legally and peacefully.

The spirit of America, imho, is not the flag, not the government, not our pride -- rather it's the one man band by the quick lunch stand.

PS: Here's a live version of For Free, performed by Joni Mitchell on the BBC.

Bit.ly launches today

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 19:14:52 GMT

First, go read Marshall Kirkpatrick's awesome writeup of bit.ly.

I was part of the team that defined the product, the development was done at Betaworks in NY (where I am right now), the team led by John Borthwick, and a bunch of ex-AOLers. Betaworks is also an investor in Summize.

Here's the official blog post.

The idea of bit.ly is that a lot more could be done with url-shorteners. I found I needed to develop my own for the NewsJunk project. They asked what it would take for me to use bit.ly, I said: data. I need to know how many clicks each pointer got and where the clicks came from.

They gave me that, and thumbnails, permanent caching of the pages I'm pointing to (goodbye linkrot) and a lot of smart stuff going on behind the scenes that we're not ready to talk about yet. (Though we told Marshall and he explained.) Here's the info page for this post.

And, most important, an XML/JSON interface, so I can process all that data with my own programs. Here's the XML readout for the shortened link to this post.

I'm a minority shareholder in this project, so know that I have a considerable interest in its success. Of course I think it's a great service, and I hope you give it a try.

Over on ReadWriteWeb, Allen Stern asks if there's a way to make money, and there is. We'll hopefully be ready to talk about it in a couple of weeks.

Which way will Twitter go?

Tue, 08 Jul 2008 11:46:51 GMT

Biz Stone posted yesterday about the status of services connected to Twitter via their XMPP gateway. We knew about Summize, suspected that FriendFeed had a deal, and learned that there are two others.

We'd like to see Twitter connect their full output to anyone who wants it, but without directly saying so, Stone implies that there are technical reasons they can't.

I am not an expert on XMPP so I have to defer to others who are. They say it would be possible for Summize to allow anyone to subscribe to the flow they receive from Twitter, and this would be transparent to Twitter.

Gnip, a company whose founders I interviewed last week, asked for this arrangement, and even thought Summize was willing to provide them with the flow, Twitter said no.

This is a clear indication that it is an economic issue, not a technical one.

I wrote yesterday that identi.ca changes things, offering a public utility model to compete with Twitter's company-owned model. It is built around the assumption that anyone can hook into the stream of any server, allowing a "federation" where being a citizen of one community means that you're a citizen of every community.

It seems then, long-term, there are three options for Twitter.

1. Open up their XMPP interface to all interested service providers, with the help of the community, so that it has no impact on the scaling of their servers. I'm almost 100 percent sure the developers would rally around such an idea, and help Twitter get this going.

2. Wait, and support the same federation protocol as identi.ca, allowing Twitter users to participate in that community, on equal terms.

3. Build AOL-like barriers around their service, to force users to connect to Twitter users only through their software.

Obviously, from the way I've written it, you can tell that I think #3 is not really an option, not if they want to learn from the experience of instant messaging.

It seems to me that blogging, which came after IM, set the precedent for Twitter-like services, and while the compatibility between blogging services isn't perfect, it's pretty good. Because of RSS (and RDF and Atom), and the two blogging APIs (Blogger and Metaweblog) you have fairly good interop. I wish it had come out better, but it's still early for Twitter-like services, compatibility could still, theoretically, be perfect.

I hope that Ev, Jack and Biz remember this, and build a business we can all respect, not built on locking users in.