7 ms·

Laconica, the Twitter clone software, is one step closer to the version 1.0

32 points by mg1313 18y ago

swood 18y ago
This seem to be the most complex Twitter clone out there. I'm talking about an open source one...
- jonknee 18y ago
  Laconica is open source...
  - swood 18y ago
    Yes, that's what I said. Because there's Revou which is another clone but it is commercial and I don't know how complex it is. And I think Jaiku went open source (maybe under another name?), but I am not sure...
modoc 18y ago
I'm curious as to the point of building a Twitter clone (other than because you can). It seems that Twitter has really captured the market for 140 char messages. What is the differentiator here?
- jdbeast00 18y ago
  enterprise microblogging?
  - mg1313 18y ago
    Exactly...Yammer does that.
    - moe 18y ago
      "Enterprise microblogging"? And there is a company selling that? And there are companies buying that? I'm not sure if I want to laugh or cry right now.
      - mg1313 18y ago
        It is known that companies are, usually, more resistant to the inovation. I just remember the company I worked for some time ago: they switched from SQL Server 2000 to SQL Server 2005 last year :)... I know a company which builds educational products...yet it doesn't support Firefox! Firefox which has 20% of the market! Another company just upgraded their Internet Explorer browser...switching from IE6 to IE7... So, give it some time...the enterprise will catch up eventually with Twitter like stuff. Too bad that, at that time, something new will be out there...and they have to play the cat and mouse again.
        moe 18y ago
        Sorry, I think you completely misunderstood me. I'm baffled that someone would even want to deploy a twitter-like app in a corporate environment. Twitter seems to be the most counter-productive form of communication imaginable, even when you get rid of the character limit.
        tptacek 18y ago
        Twitter is probably more valuable inside an enterprise than on the Internet. It's part of plenty of people's jobs to keep up with a constant stream of minor updates.
        modoc 18y ago
        The 140 char limit, the inability to attach files, etc... seem very counter-productive with regards to intra-corporate communication. I'd never look toward Twitter for that role. IRC, campfire, Confluence, etc... sure, but never Twitter.
        18y ago
- mg1313 18y ago
  I guess this resembles the case of the social networks out there. There are some general leaders (Facebook, Myspace, Hi5) and some niche leaders (Linkedin and other dozen of niche social networks). And a bit resembles also with the search engine situation: Google is the leader but that doesn't stop entrepreneurs to build niche search engines or even take on Google directly. Twitter is the leader, no doubt. But a Twitter clone could have a specific niche (Yammer, for example, is much more oriented to enterprise "twittering"). Laconica just offers you, free, the mean to build such a niche service without being necessary to hire developers. Like there are lots of social networking software...or video sharing software (Youtube clones).
  - ttacor 18y ago
    Interesting...I used a Youtube clone software to build a niche video sharing service. Of course, I never hope to reach Youtube mass...and I don't intent to.
- TomOfTTB 18y ago
  I'm not a Twitter devotee personally but if they're right and Twitter keeps growing eventually competition is going to spring up. I mean, imagine a company having a monopoly on e-mail and having to build a system robust enough to handle every e-mail sent worldwide. It wouldn't be possible. Given that it makes a certain amount of sense to start working on an open source protocol now so that it's mature when/if Twitter competition starts to spring up.
- jbrun 18y ago
  These guys are based at the same co-working station as us, Station-C in Montreal, and they seem to have an idea of what they are doing. Following the linux model. They install micro-blogging on companies intranets and then do service for them. Not a bad idea, won't be the next google, but it is a niche market that seems ripe for the taking. A lot of companies want to use twitter like services, but are not comfortable going online.
  - mg1313 18y ago
    A good way to make money for those guys...intranet microblogging.
- deleted 18y ago
  [deleted]
- riffic 18y ago
  One problem with twitter is you can't control the namespace.
- nir 18y ago
  Having it available as open source can prove a significant advantage - they might become the Wordpress of microblogging, so to speak. As for Twitter capturing the microblogging market, with ~6 million users I doubt this is the case. Either what we've seen so far is the tip of the iceberg, or there is very little real demand for microblogging. Twitter seems to be very focused on a certain market and certain set of features, so there's definitely room for other players.
  - dagobart 18y ago
    I think the laconi.ca folks could gain a significant share of the market if they indeed would make it possible for their users to have the same username for all identi.ca installations in the world, just as it is possible for wordpress users to comment on every wordpress blog using the same wordpress identity. A while back, I reasoned on Twitter vs identi.ca. -- Here's the bit on roaming micro-blogging services: http://is.gd/sJtL http://is.gd/sJtL
- warp 18y ago
  Twitter is a walled garden. Laconi.ca isn't, you can subscribe and respond to users on laconi.ca installations on other domains. It doesn't even have to be running the laconi.ca software, you can communicate with any domain which adheres to the OpenMicroBlogging protocol (there is atleast one other implementation out there).
zandorg 18y ago
Isn't Twitter's role to do with subsidising the cost of sending thousands of SMS messages? Rather than the actual software that sends them...
- swood 18y ago
  Yeah, I think Twitter is subsidizing the SMS (text messages) sent to the mobile phones...I read somewhere that they stopped to do this in China or another asian country because it was just too expensive...
aidanf 18y ago
"Laconica is built on PHP/MySQL open source software." Given all the hullabaloo about twiter scaling, rewrites, etc, I thought it would be clear by now that a database driven website is not a good architecture for twitter-like messaging system.
- wmf 18y ago
  A single instance of Laconica probably won't support millions of users, but the whole point IMO is to federate smaller Laconica sites rather than building a huge centralized monopoly.
  - mg1313 18y ago
    That's an idea, in fact. Aggregate all those small players into a big one...and other new small players can join to the federation...
  - moe 18y ago
    Can you say XMMP... Those who don't understand are doomed to re-invent. Poorly.
    - wmf 18y ago
      I was thinking more of SMTP. Twitter and Facebook may be the Compuserve and Genie of Web 2.0.
      - kragen 18y ago
        You know, SMTP supports instant messages: SEND FROM: in place of MAIL FROM:. Apparently an analogous facility (I forget if it was actually connected to SMTP) was one of the major reasons for the uptake of Emacs on Multics.
    - jerf 18y ago
      Unfortunately, the XMPP feature that is what Laconica should have been based on was only relatively recently specified and implementations are still stabilizing, which is a necessary step before we have clients that support it. I'm speaking specifically of "PubSub", where you can publish your updates and they get sent out only to subscribers. Note that twitter does not otherwise match a conventional IM message, nor does it match a conventional conference room. It does precisely match the PubSub use case, and I still hope to see something based on that. Laconica isn't wrong to ignore it, per se, but they will end up having to do (or have already done) a lot of very, very redundant specification as a result of ignoring it. (I'd think they'd still have been better off taking an existing XMPP server, fixing the pubsub to do what they want, and building from there.)
twopoint718 18y ago
Here is a podcast interview with the Laconica creator that cleared a lot of things up for me: http://www.twit.tv/floss37 http://www.twit.tv/floss37
- mg1313 18y ago
  Thanks for the link. The more details we get the better we understand...

32 points by mg1313 18y ago

swood 18y ago

This seem to be the most complex Twitter clone out there. I'm talking about an open source one...

jonknee 18y ago
Laconica is open source...
- swood 18y ago
  Yes, that's what I said. Because there's Revou which is another clone but it is commercial and I don't know how complex it is. And I think Jaiku went open source (maybe under another name?), but I am not sure...

modoc 18y ago

I'm curious as to the point of building a Twitter clone (other than because you can). It seems that Twitter has really captured the market for 140 char messages. What is the differentiator here?

jdbeast00 18y ago
enterprise microblogging?
- mg1313 18y ago
  Exactly...Yammer does that.
  - moe 18y ago
    "Enterprise microblogging"? And there is a company selling that? And there are companies buying that? I'm not sure if I want to laugh or cry right now.
    - mg1313 18y ago
      It is known that companies are, usually, more resistant to the inovation. I just remember the company I worked for some time ago: they switched from SQL Server 2000 to SQL Server 2005 last year :)... I know a company which builds educational products...yet it doesn't support Firefox! Firefox which has 20% of the market! Another company just upgraded their Internet Explorer browser...switching from IE6 to IE7... So, give it some time...the enterprise will catch up eventually with Twitter like stuff. Too bad that, at that time, something new will be out there...and they have to play the cat and mouse again.
      - moe 18y ago
        Sorry, I think you completely misunderstood me. I'm baffled that someone would even want to deploy a twitter-like app in a corporate environment. Twitter seems to be the most counter-productive form of communication imaginable, even when you get rid of the character limit.
        tptacek 18y ago
        Twitter is probably more valuable inside an enterprise than on the Internet. It's part of plenty of people's jobs to keep up with a constant stream of minor updates.
        modoc 18y ago
        The 140 char limit, the inability to attach files, etc... seem very counter-productive with regards to intra-corporate communication. I'd never look toward Twitter for that role. IRC, campfire, Confluence, etc... sure, but never Twitter.
        18y ago
mg1313 18y ago
I guess this resembles the case of the social networks out there. There are some general leaders (Facebook, Myspace, Hi5) and some niche leaders (Linkedin and other dozen of niche social networks). And a bit resembles also with the search engine situation: Google is the leader but that doesn't stop entrepreneurs to build niche search engines or even take on Google directly. Twitter is the leader, no doubt. But a Twitter clone could have a specific niche (Yammer, for example, is much more oriented to enterprise "twittering"). Laconica just offers you, free, the mean to build such a niche service without being necessary to hire developers. Like there are lots of social networking software...or video sharing software (Youtube clones).
- ttacor 18y ago
  Interesting...I used a Youtube clone software to build a niche video sharing service. Of course, I never hope to reach Youtube mass...and I don't intent to.
TomOfTTB 18y ago
I'm not a Twitter devotee personally but if they're right and Twitter keeps growing eventually competition is going to spring up. I mean, imagine a company having a monopoly on e-mail and having to build a system robust enough to handle every e-mail sent worldwide. It wouldn't be possible. Given that it makes a certain amount of sense to start working on an open source protocol now so that it's mature when/if Twitter competition starts to spring up.
jbrun 18y ago
These guys are based at the same co-working station as us, Station-C in Montreal, and they seem to have an idea of what they are doing. Following the linux model. They install micro-blogging on companies intranets and then do service for them. Not a bad idea, won't be the next google, but it is a niche market that seems ripe for the taking. A lot of companies want to use twitter like services, but are not comfortable going online.
- mg1313 18y ago
  A good way to make money for those guys...intranet microblogging.
deleted 18y ago
[deleted]
riffic 18y ago
One problem with twitter is you can't control the namespace.
nir 18y ago
Having it available as open source can prove a significant advantage - they might become the Wordpress of microblogging, so to speak. As for Twitter capturing the microblogging market, with ~6 million users I doubt this is the case. Either what we've seen so far is the tip of the iceberg, or there is very little real demand for microblogging. Twitter seems to be very focused on a certain market and certain set of features, so there's definitely room for other players.
- dagobart 18y ago
  I think the laconi.ca folks could gain a significant share of the market if they indeed would make it possible for their users to have the same username for all identi.ca installations in the world, just as it is possible for wordpress users to comment on every wordpress blog using the same wordpress identity. A while back, I reasoned on Twitter vs identi.ca. -- Here's the bit on roaming micro-blogging services: http://is.gd/sJtL http://is.gd/sJtL
warp 18y ago
Twitter is a walled garden. Laconi.ca isn't, you can subscribe and respond to users on laconi.ca installations on other domains. It doesn't even have to be running the laconi.ca software, you can communicate with any domain which adheres to the OpenMicroBlogging protocol (there is atleast one other implementation out there).

zandorg 18y ago

Isn't Twitter's role to do with subsidising the cost of sending thousands of SMS messages? Rather than the actual software that sends them...

swood 18y ago
Yeah, I think Twitter is subsidizing the SMS (text messages) sent to the mobile phones...I read somewhere that they stopped to do this in China or another asian country because it was just too expensive...

aidanf 18y ago

"Laconica is built on PHP/MySQL open source software." Given all the hullabaloo about twiter scaling, rewrites, etc, I thought it would be clear by now that a database driven website is not a good architecture for twitter-like messaging system.

wmf 18y ago
A single instance of Laconica probably won't support millions of users, but the whole point IMO is to federate smaller Laconica sites rather than building a huge centralized monopoly.
- mg1313 18y ago
  That's an idea, in fact. Aggregate all those small players into a big one...and other new small players can join to the federation...
- moe 18y ago
  Can you say XMMP... Those who don't understand are doomed to re-invent. Poorly.
  - wmf 18y ago
    I was thinking more of SMTP. Twitter and Facebook may be the Compuserve and Genie of Web 2.0.
    - kragen 18y ago
      You know, SMTP supports instant messages: SEND FROM: in place of MAIL FROM:. Apparently an analogous facility (I forget if it was actually connected to SMTP) was one of the major reasons for the uptake of Emacs on Multics.
  - jerf 18y ago
    Unfortunately, the XMPP feature that is what Laconica should have been based on was only relatively recently specified and implementations are still stabilizing, which is a necessary step before we have clients that support it. I'm speaking specifically of "PubSub", where you can publish your updates and they get sent out only to subscribers. Note that twitter does not otherwise match a conventional IM message, nor does it match a conventional conference room. It does precisely match the PubSub use case, and I still hope to see something based on that. Laconica isn't wrong to ignore it, per se, but they will end up having to do (or have already done) a lot of very, very redundant specification as a result of ignoring it. (I'd think they'd still have been better off taking an existing XMPP server, fixing the pubsub to do what they want, and building from there.)

twopoint718 18y ago

Here is a podcast interview with the Laconica creator that cleared a lot of things up for me: http://www.twit.tv/floss37 http://www.twit.tv/floss37

mg1313 18y ago
Thanks for the link. The more details we get the better we understand...