Posted 05/14/09 at 01:55:52 PM by David Murphy

When's the last time you surfed on over to your Pligg and updated what you were doing for the entire Internet to see?  What about Elgg?  Have you changed your favorite movies to reflect that big blockbuster hit you saw this weekend?  You probably don't have to, because all of your friends using the Tweetero client on their iPhones could just log on and see exactly what you were up to.  Or not.  Because you aren't on Twitter -- you're on Identi.ca, the open-source equivalent of the popular messaging program.

Unlike the open-source software world, where even the smallest gems of programs can find a meaningful existence, the open-source social networking world depends on people.  Masses of people.  You can't just launch a new social networking platform and expect it to flourish if it doesn't have a decently sized audience. And you're never going to pull away the users that are already comfortable on their existing Web 2.0 platforms if you just imitate the best practices of the current litany of sites.  But that's what's happening in the open-source social networking world right now.  There's a healthy mix of innovation and duplication, giving some segments of the online world new and interesting applications... and others with their 25th version of Twitter.

Which areas of social networking are dead zones for open-source development?  Click the jump to find out!

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Posted 07/03/08 at 09:58:30 AM by Chris Moody

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 failwhale 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.

Make the jump to hear more about Identi.ca!

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