Micro-blogging is a form of blogging that allows users to write brief text updates (usually 140 characters) and publish them. Microposts can be made public on a Web site and/or distributed to a private group of subscribers. Subscribers can read microblog posts online or request that updates be delivered in real time totheir desktop as an instant message or sent to a mobile device as an SMS text message. These messages can be submitted by a variety of means, including text messaging, instant messaging, email, MP3 or the web.

Subscribers to a particular microblogger are called followers. If you are wondering what the phenomenom is with followers and why microblogging is becoming more popular then you only have to look at MySpace. MySpaces status application is unbelievably popular. It seems that changing your status and having all your friends notified is being used for something more than it was intended. It has become a micro-blogging platform only without the ability to save the posts. If MySpace were to add persistance to the postings and one or
two other features they will have a big hit on their hands.

Twitter and Jaiku

Twitter and Jaiku are the defacto microblogging websites of today with Twitter being the most popular. But as in all things internet there is a constant outcry for open source software to be used to make clones of Twitter. There no open source projects around to speak of until now. Just recently two hobbyists have taken on the tasks and gotten plenty of help from the open source community. One of the best things about them is the fact that the code base is diverse. One project using ASP.NET and the MVC framework while the other is using PHP.

Open Source Alternatives

Laconica is an open source microblogging tool written in PHP. All data is stored in a MySQL database. Laconica was created as a direct response of a need to create an open source, distributed alternative to Twitter. Laconica implements the OpenMicroBlogging standard. It was originally used by the identi.ca microblogging service.

Features

Current release of Laconica has a basic microblog feature set, on which new features are expected to be built on rapidly due to the open source nature of the software.

Current features include:

• Updates using a Jabber client
• OpenID authentication
• Subscribing to notices by users on a remote service through OpenMicroBlogging

These are upcoming priority features for Laconica:

• SMS updates and notifications
• A Twitter-compatible API
• More AJAX-y interface
• Maps
• Cross-post to Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku,etc.
• Pull messages from Twitter, Pownce, Jaiku, etc.
• Facebook integration
• Hashtags
• Image, video, audio notices
• Automatic url-shortening
• Multilingual interface (using Gettext)

Yonkly is an open source micro-blogging CMS written in ASP.NET. The project was started as a training excercise by Emad Ibrahim. The project seems to be gaining momentum because of the enthusiasm shown by the ASP.NET community.

Current features include:

1. Conversation threads - here is an example
   
2. Message replies automatically turn into a conversation, just hit the reply button
   
3. Message deletes - cannot delete messages that have been replied to.
4. Follow and Un-follow friends
5. Built-in URL shortening
6. Public timeline
7. Friends and followers stats
8. Integration with Gravatar (www.gravatar.com)
9. Search for friends by email or username
10. Invite friends

Priorities and upcoming features:

1. REST API
2. RSS feeds
3. Twitter and Facebook integration
4. Expanded user profile
5. Friend finder - using gmail, hotmail, outlook imports, etc…
6. Email notifications with opt-in/opt-out options
7. Silverlight, Windows, mac and mobile clients (require the API)
8. Migrate to SQL Server standard
9. UI changes and improvements

In comparison  these two projects have much in common in that they are so young and the thinking behind them is not concrete. But they both have great
potential and it is my hope that they do not stray to far from the path as many MySpace and Digg cloning projects have done.

Happy Publishing!

Ten years of experience in web development. Carl is looking for in employment as a Senior PHP/mySQL Developer in Stockholm.
Carl McDade - Systems Developer