[bntly]

But there are celebrities and that hot girl from high-school within that walled garden.It sucks and i wish the products were better and more open but the bar for entry is mostly user draw, and T&A is what draws them in..

*edited for spelling >_>

[mvzink]

You just made me think of something. The common folk may as well continue using Twitter, and you're right about the bar to entry. We few, the vanguard of openness and reliability, can use approaches like Dave Winer's to provide an open, durable parallel "Twitter-like ecosystem" that integrates with Twitter—and once Twitter goes away (and Facebook and Google+ and even SMS) we will integrate with its successor—or hopefully, ideally, help create it's successor on top of the open web. It could be a durable base for future work, and a safety net for now.

Also: any time I consider using identi.ca again, it's with this view. Even if it doesn't gain popularity, I can at least provide my own guarantees that it will be around (so long as some few others use it) even when Facebook or Twitter go away.

[davewiner]

You got it baby!

That's exactly the idea. It's a bootstrap. You use the systems that are in place now to boot up the successor.

It's never either/or. You use everything that works, that has people on it that you need to reach, as long as they welcome you.

This has been the problem with Google-Plus. They don't have an API that lets you post to it. But Twitter does. To everyone who follows me on Twitter, they don't have any idea that I'm not really on their network. In every sense that matters I am.

But when Twitter goes down, I keep posting, and people who are hooked in my feed still get the new stuff.

[mvzink]

Good to know I got the point! :P Can I ask about your thoughts on StatusNet?

[glhaynes]

I can at least provide my own guarantees that it will be around (so long as some few others use it)

Isn't this exactly the problem? Keeping a service alive in perpetuity is missing the point because it's the communication that's important, not the service upon which the communication flows... Human communication is inherently temporally limited. If you ignore that, you're not gonna be heard now, which makes you even less likely to be heard in the future.

EDIT: I guess I'm just saying: nobody reads old messages on this sort of service. If you're not targeting "now", you're starting off with an immense disability.

[mvzink]

Aha, I didn't understand at all before your edit (no offense :P), and I think you have a good point, but it is actually on the "pro" side for approaches like Winer's: the hypothetical "Twitter-like ecosystem" is targeting now, just like Twitter (less the realtime-related problems, sadly), but is set up to continue targeting "now" once nobody uses Twitter, even during the transition period!

[carols10cents]

That's exactly why I work on http://rstat.us [1] -- we need to be here, ready, for the next decision that Twitter makes that pisses more people off, for the next time that Twitter is down, etc.

[1] - a microblogging site that uses ostatus; we integrate with identi.ca. code here: https://github.com/hotsh/rstat.us

[davewiner]

Read item #8 in the doc that you're discussing.

"8. BTW, it has to hook into Twitter. Key point. The thing that's kept the other networks from working is that they don't peer with Twitter. Luckily this is in keeping with the new Twitter mandate of putting stuff in but not taking stuff out. Great. If you want to read what someone says on Twitter you have to use Twitter. Not a big deal it turns out."

http://scripting.com/stories/2012/07/25/anOpenTwitterlikeEco...

[rhizome]

It's OK, for the time being, APIs allow you to pump content into the walled gardens from the new open Twootbook. Users can be bled off over time.

[joe_the_user]

OK,

I don't use Twitter but I see celebrities and T&A a lot more when I log out of my yahoo webmail than when I'm on Facebook. Real, honest to god porn, for that matter, has stayed on the "open web". There are still, uh, forces pushing people that way.

Also, as far as I know the masses have never been on Twitter.