First the Tech God, created blogging and he saw that it was good, but it wasn’t enough. So then, the Tech God created micro-blogging and Twitter was born. But then he thought is Twitter good enough? So then, he decided to go open source and made Identi.ca

Okay, so the Tech God didn’t make Identi.ca (or anything else), it’s actually a creation by Evan Prodromou as an open source alternative to Twitter for users that are frustrated by Twitters frequent service outages. Who doesn’t love seeing the fail whale art (birds lifting a whale for those that have been under a rock) on Twitters website once in awhile? It seems Evan Prodromou for one.

Jabber support, Open ID are available and a slew of other features are in the works such as SMS, URL shortening, cross posting to Twitter, AJAX interface, etc. Identi.ca is using a new open source spec in the works for micro-blogging, called (oddly enough) OpenMicroblogging. Go figure. I’m all for open source, but this spec isn’t complete and I don’t know of anyone else that uses it. One spec is a must if posting across multiple platforms is going to become a reality. It seems like they will have an uphill battle with Twitter on that one.

Something that I don’t know if I like, is that all content submitted is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License. It’s micro-blogging, so no one should be posting any great Shakespearean works of art on it, but its just a nagging doubt on that aspect of Identi.ca.

Many folks are also comparing it to IRC and calling it a reinvention of the wheel. One of the great claims of Identi.ca is that it is not centralized. If the server you are on goes down you can just switch servers. Anyone that has used IRC knows that you have to go find another server to switch to first.

Despite these concerns Identi.ca is already drawing a number of people to it, and the Indenti.ca website has been up and down. It’s obvious there are still bugs to be work out, but who knows. Maybe someday you can catch MPC Editor-in-Chief Will Smith’s micro-blogging on Identi.ca. Are you into Microblogging and would you make the jump? Sound off below.

(Image Credit: zazzle.com/failwhale)