The ostatus protocol already is in use through various projects, albeit relative to RMS GNUSocial would be the topical one. It replaces Facebook and Twitter wit

The ostatus protocol already is in use through various projects, albeit relative to RMS GNUSocial would be the topical one. It replaces Facebook and Twitter with a federated newsfeed / profile protocol where you can either run your own server or use a third party server to connect to any other ostatus user in the same user@server semantics as email, xmpp, or matrix.