Answer: It's really expensive and complicated to run an at-scale, common infrastructure project. If identi.ca got to scale it might cost $100-200k a month for s

Answer: It's really expensive and complicated to run an at-scale, common infrastructure project. If identi.ca got to scale it might cost $100-200k a month for servers and bandwidth. That doesn't take into account building out five to ten sysadmins and a customer support department. Of course, Wikipedia has done it.... last I heard they had hundreds of servers in four locations. That has to cost millions a year to service.