Not to my surprise, a new Twitter competitor arose recently called Kwippy, and they came out swinging. This blog post by Kwippy highlights their architecture and it focuses on why they will not succumb to fail-whale syndrome:

Today in the world of micro-blogging, problems of twitter have become nearly household news. This has made site developers think about how can they make their site stable and scale with good Quality of service to the user (you , me , everyone). This post is about how we have planned kwippy, the whys and how we ensure that kwippy, the whale does not beach.

Yes, you read that correctly. They referenced the whale. At any rate, Kwippy is a micro/nanoblogging platform which reminds me of Pownce, Jaiku, and Plurk but with minor differences:

• It does not have a (140) character limit
• It does not offer rich media embedding (pictures, video, music)
• It notifies you of new subscriptions via IM
• It does offer commenting on “kwips” that are posted, but users can “subscribe” to these threads giving them a convenient means of “keeping up”.
• It does not have mobile features (SMS, iPhone/mobile/wap webpage)

Some of these differences may not be as bad as they seem. For example, the lack of a character limitation propels Kwippy in the realm of Tumblr and Posterous tumblelogs. Without rich media embeds or text formatting, however, it kind of falls flat on its face. I have submitted feedback to the authors regarding some shortcomings that I’ve seen and they seem very responsive. That’s always a plus. Here’s a walkthrough:

The biggest flaw that I can find with Kwippy is the look and feel of the website. It needs a CSS makeover ASAP. This issue is not a critical one as its in private beta and also a very young application. The look and feel of the website is more easily addressable than say the database architecture. If they address this before going live, I can see this as a decent contender. The feature-set is fairly weak, but with so much focus on a stable architecture, one can’t help but hope for the best for Kwippy. Keep your eye on this one.

You can find me on Kwippy at http://www.kwippy.com/bwana.

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I agree that Twitter could use some help, but I don’t know if opening the source is the main solution. I do believe, a healthy dose of stiff competition encourages innovation. [...]

Today, I joined Identi.ca. Is it YATC (Yet another Twitter clone)? Sure seems like it on the surface. Identi.ca offers a timeline view identical to Twitter, limits your updates to 140 characters, and it offers Jabber/Gtalk posts and updates. If that ain’t a Twitter clone, I don’t know what is. Here’s what the founding company, Control Yourself ,has to say:

Identi.ca is similar to existing microblogging sites such as Twitter, Jaiku, or Pownce. Unlike those services, Identi.ca’s underlying software is available under an Open Source license. Identi.ca is also the first service to support OpenMicroBlogging, a standard for exchanging short messages between microblogging sites. Identi.ca also makes public user data available under a Creative Commons license in standard formats.

That’s a great quote because it clearly outlines a huge differentiator from Twitter: Identi.ca is open sourced. I stand by my original assessment that it’s not clear whether an open sourced Twitter will actually be a better Twitter, but I will watch it very closely. Another point that should be noted about Identi.ca, is that it supports OpenMicroBlogging. The software that runs Identi.ca, called Laconi.ca, allows users to run their own federated instance of the software. This has made advocates of a federated Twitter, like Dave Winer, very excited about the possibilities. I have went on record to say that a federated architecture is not also guaranteed to produce a successful Twitter, as there have been many stable non-federated messaging systems. They all had a sound design. I’m not saying it won’t work, I’m stating that it’s not a silver bullet. Either way, it’s happening now that Identi.ca has entered the space. With juggernauts such as Winer “excited” about it, it can only be a good thing for developer momentum.

So what are my thoughts about Identi.ca so far? My day 0 impressions are:

It’s slow. Not surprised at all by this. The user base is increasing a blistering pace, and I’m sure their developers are adjusting. The source is out there, so before you complain too much about it, go fix it!

According to their FAQ, many of my gripes are “coming soon”. Given the age of this service, I cannot declare it a success or failure just yet. If anyone else does, I will greatly question their motives. I do think that the addition of open source and a possible federated Twitter make it a service to watch in the coming months.

Twitter, it’s time to get stable right now.

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• Twit-out: The Day Without Twitter
• My Twitter-Fu is Better Than Yours

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Now, things have gotten better.

FriendFeed has launched audio sharing. What is audio sharing? As with Pownce, you can share an audio file on FriendFeed, and the file is playable right on FriendFeed’s website using a flash embed. What’s also very nice, is that this feature honors RSS enclosures. So, if you are feeding your podcast RSS feed to FriendFeed, your podcasts are automatically playable right within FriendFeed! Combine this with rooms, and you instantly have an interactive forum with multimedia capabilities. Starting today, I’m going to use my Bwana.org Radio FriendFeed room as my official forum for the podcast.

The next step is video. FriendFeed, are you listening?

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My favorite game at the moment, Team Fortress 2 (TF2), is scheduled to be updated today. As I suggested in my TF2 video (sadly, my server is no more), the PC version is so much better than its console counterpart. Today’s patch is one reason why. The medic class has already received an update which includes new achievements which unlocks new weapons. Today’s update addresses the Pyro (flame thrower) class and does not disappoint.

The Pyro class is getting three new weapons:

• The Flare gun - The first Pyro unlockable is The Flare Gun, which replaces the shotgun. It allows the Pyro to ignite an enemy at long range, but does require careful aim on their part. It’s particularly useful for causing havoc on Snipers and Engineers who want to keep their distance.
• The Backburner - The second Pyro unlockable is The Backburner. This flamethrower is built for the Pyro who likes to ambush their opponents. It removes the compression blast capability, instead guaranteeing critical hits whenever it’s used on an opponent from behind. To aid in survivability, it grants the Pyro an extra fifty health.
• The Axtinguisher - The third Pyro unlockable is The Axtinguisher. This mighty axe guarantees critical hits on any enemy that’s currently on fire, although it’s significantly weaker against enemies who aren’t. A great combination with the The Flare Gun, or with another Pyro buddy riding alongside doing the igniting.

As with the medic patch, these new weapons will become available as you unlock the Pyro’s achievements. Along with these new weapons, two community maps are moving to official status: cp_fastlane and ctf_turbine. I’m glad to see a new capture map so fast since the new playmode was introduced in the medic patch. You poor Xbox 360 and PS3 owners of the Orange Box (which includes TF2) are not getting these yet. I’m sorry.

Got a computer that can handle Half Life 2? Well Valve is offering yet another free weekend of play for Team Fortress 2 (June 20 - June 22). The game is absolutely free to download and will be active on steam until June 22nd. I suggest downloading the game today since it’s pretty big, and you’ll be ready to play on June 20th. If you missed out on the last free weekend, now’s your chance to dive in and have some fun with Team Fortress 2. I guarantee, you’ll have a blast!

“Spy sappin’ my dispenser!” Well gotta go! Add me on steam (iobuffa) so you can help me burn these stupid spies!

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If you didn’t already know, 10 days ago, I got tired of trying to use Twitter only to be greeted by errors. I have a strong Software Quality Assurance background and have a small tolerance for bad software, yet I put up with Twitter for almost 2 years. I had to call it quits.

This is not a post to bash Twitter as there has been more than enough of that around the web. I want to share with you what I’ve learned while being “away” from Twitter for 10 days:

1. There is no replacement for Twitter. As I stated here, I didn’t have an exit strategy and that was for a reason. There is only one Twitter. There is Jaiku, Pownce, and Plurk, but these only try to be like Twitter. They do have their advantages in terms of features, but there will always be only one Twitter.
2. I’m not missing much. I’ve been spending more time on Google Reader and Toluu, which is expanding my exposure to what’s going on in the world. I’ve also gotten into using Alltop, which is much better than I first thought. They’ve put a lot of good information in one place which is very convenient.
3. I’m still participating in discussions. Yup, you guessed it: FriendFeed. I’ve been having live discussions during the NBA Finals, talking about Battlestar Galactica and that frackin’ 5th cylon, getting geared up for the upcoming NFL season, and getting exposure to new tools, by using FriendFeed.
4. There are other ways to post status updates. These other ways are arguably better than Twitter, but like I said earlier, there is only one Twitter. Louis Gray posted a great article on how to centralize discussions surrounding your status updates using Google Talk and FriendFeed. I’ve been experimenting with this the past few days and so far, it has been interesting.
5. You can’t avoid Twitter. When I decided to stop using Twitter, I recognized that I will see stories about Twitter, tweets from people in FriendFeed, and often be pointed to Summize results. It doesn’t bother me that I still take in data from Twitter even though I’m not using it. FriendFeed has taught me that I don’t have to use a service in order to digest data from it.
6. Twitter is an addiction. I would like to be joking, but I’m not. Steve Gillmor was accurate when he described the removal of the Twitter IM/track feature as “removal of the heroin from the streets”. People, including myself at one point, have become reliant on Twitter for day to day activities and literally get the shakes when Twitter is down. I could go into a long analysis about how our behavior is similar to someone who quit smoking, quit drinking, or quit doing some other drug when Twitter goes down, but that’s for another day.
7. I don’t hate Twitter. It’s easy to come to that conclusion given what I’ve done. I actually want Twitter to succeed. I just can’t use bad software as it damages my calm™. I still use Summize for some tasks. For example, I couldn’t find a FriendFeed room for Tiger Woods’ exciting comeback in the US Open. Robert Scoble tweeted that he was following it on Summize and I followed along, as I watched it on TV. The reactions were hilarious!

In short, the internet still goes on without Twitter. There are other ways to digest data. It’s also important to remember that one should not strive to replace Twitter if you chose to leave it. I also implore those who are addicted to keep Twitter as a tool that you control, not a tool that controls you. Let me know your thoughts.

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The ability to import and export existing comments with ease propels Intense Debate as the clear winner.

Both Disqus and Intense Debate now support FriendFeed, both have great moderation options, both have a decent reputation system. The huge difference here is that my existing data is safe AND my future data is easily accessible. I realize Disqus has data portability options available, but Intense Debate’s are much simpler in my mind. I also realize, with Disqus, you can keep your existing comments on your blog and only use Disqus for new posts. (Intense Debate has the same option) While this workaround may be sufficient for some, I’m not a big fan of keeping two separate commenting systems on the same blog. Intense Debate’s solution is more elegant, seamless, and easier for the user to use and maintain.

I commend the folks over at Intense Debate and FriendFeed for making this happen, and I’m glad I was patient with Intense Debate. I’m quite confident I’ve made the right choice. Take a look at the Intense Debate comments on FriendFeed.

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One of these features is pretty significant: Semi-public rooms. Semi-public rooms allow an administrator of a room to have control over the posts within a room, but the public can view and comment.

Monday, June 9th is a big day in the Apple world: The World Wide Developers Conference, or WWDC. A common tactic in the community is to “live blog” the announcements as they happen. Sites such as Engadget, Macrumors, TUAW, and Ars Technica have become popular destinations to get the latest product announcements from Steve Jobs’ keynote at WWDC and other conferences. These sites use cool AJAX techniques as well as old school mechanisms such as IRC (which is my preference).

To all these sites who are covering WWDC and will be live-blogging, I offer this suggestion: Use FriendFeed rooms.

FriendFeed is a perfect atmosphere for promoting and elevating discussion. Your administrators can post a status update, and tons of users can comment on each update. By using semi-public rooms, you have total control over the room including moderation of comments. I feel this will change the way we follow live events. Engadget, Macrumors, Ars, TUAW, or anyone else out there who may read this, please consider using FriendFeed rooms for Monday’s keynote. You will be happy you did.

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When a new Twitter clone emerges in an already crowded space, it is easy to denounce it as just another wanna-be and classify it as a failure. No one knew Twitter would take the internet by storm, competitors such as Jaiku and Pownce are still thriving today, but they are nowhere near the size Twitter is.

Enter Plurk. Plurk? Are you kidding me? What kind of a name is Plurk?

Noun. plurk (plüer-kh) - A really snazzy site that allows you to showcase the events that make up your life in deliciously digestible chunks. Low in fat, 5 calories per serving, yet chock full of goodness.

Verb. plurk (plüer-kh) - To chronicle the events of your always on, action-packed, storybook, semi-charmed kinda life.

Well, that clears things up.

Anyway, Plurk is a relatively new service which emulates Twitter’s notion of short status updates. Plurk is centered around the notion of “Karma”, which is a point-reward system for participating in discussions and using the service. The interface on the web site mimics a river of moving information. The bottom axis is the time of day and the updates travel along it. There is emphasis on specific verbs such as “is, thinks, shares”. At first glance, it’s a horrible representation of status updates. Twitter has taught us that updates in 140 characters or less should always be displayed in a vertical, tabular format. Just look at all the bashing going on at Twitter, it’s not easy to read coming from that world. Plurk aims to thrash this mindset and present the data in a new fashion. A daunting task, indeed.

Let’s talk about more of the features:

I’ve provided a video walkthrough of some of Plurk’s features including the mobile interface:

I’ve used Plurk for almost a week (karma 38.07 at the time of this post), and I’ve found some of it’s initial shortcomings are not as huge as some make it out to be. Some obvious areas of improvement include:

So what’s the big deal with Plurk?

I believe Plurk is a strong candidate as a Twitter replacement for many people. Hear me out. Plurk encourages use of its system with Karma. The more Karma you accumulate, the more features you obtain. (currently only emoticons and profile features, but this can easily be extended). In an age where kids buy crappy Xbox 360 games simply to increase their gamerscore and unlock achievements, this is a huge advantage. Sure, it’s not for everyone, but there are a lot of potential users who would be addicted to Plurk not for the utility, but for the fun. I mean, who doesn’t like statistics? Think about why Jaiku and Pownce are lacking users. (Most) People stopped using them because everyone was on Twitter. There was little reason to go back if your friends were on Twitter. Plurk gives the user an incentive to return and to keep Plurking. That’s powerful.

I know there are many early adopters who believe Karma is stupid and don’t understand the appeal, but how many of those same brilliant minds could grasp the appeal of Twitter during it’s inception? Not many.

I can safely say that Plurk has grown on me. While I don’t see it as an immediate Twitter killer at the moment, I do see a great deal of momentum forming with Twitter’s issues. A wise man said: “The longer Twitter has issues and prohibits the user from using it, the more likely the user is going to forget why they fell in love with it in the first place“. The clock is definitely ticking. Twitter’s uptime has become the exception and not the norm. I do understand that the website is generally up, but for many, Twitter’s advantage to other services come from IM/Jabber and tracking capabilities, which are currently down. The API is also in a crippled state.

If you find Plurk interesting, come on by and sign up. Using this link will increase my karma (lol), and also automatically add me to your friends list. (Hey, at least I’m honest :)) Once you get started, here are some resources that may interest you:

Short summary: There’s much more to Plurk that meets the eye.

Related Thoughts

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• Intense Debate Is the Easy Choice
• Google Reader Shared Notes Feature
• In Search Of A Video Micro-blogging Solution
• Kwippy Offers Stability First

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1. Add the official FriendFeed widget to your blog. This is done by navigating to http://www.friendfeed.com/embed, and then inserting the supplied code to your blog.
   
   
   
   
   

   You can install this in your sidebar or on a dedicated page simply by copying and pasting the code supplied in your blog template.

2. Modify the official FriendFeed widget to embed certain services to your blog. I learned this yesterday from Paul Buchheit. You can filter which services you wish to embed by modifying the embed URL:
   
   <script type="text/javascript" src="http://friendfeed.com/embed/widget/bwana?
num=2&service=twitter“></script>
   
   The items in bold in the above example denote the username, the number of items and the service name respectively. This particular widget will show the last two Twitter entries for username bwana. This is powerful in that it shows the latest service entry as well as the first few FriendFeed comments. The service names can be internal (FriendFeed messages), blog, lastfm, seesmic, googlereader, and so on. To get the name of the service, go over to FriendFeed and hover over the service icon and look at the URL. This is what an embed looks like for Twitter:
   
   
   
   
   
3. Embed your latest FriendFeed messsage text only. There are multiple ways to do this, but thanks to Benjamin Golub, I’ve found the feed supplied by the API is the easiest way. The first thing to do is to determine your FriendFeed ATOM URL from the API. It is of the format
   
   http://friendfeed.com/api/feed/user?nickname=[YOURNICKNAME]
&service=[SERVICE]&output=atom&num=[COUNT]
   
   My URL is
   
   http://friendfeed.com/api/feed/user?nickname=bwana
&service=internal&output=atom&num=1
   
   Once you have established your feed URL, use your favorite RSS/Atom plugin to embed it in your blog. For Wordpress, the RSS widget should work fine. My favorite is feedlist. With my blog, I simply put the following in my template where I wanted the update:
   
<?
feedList(array("rss_feed_url"=>"http://friendfeed.com/api/feed/
user?nickname=bwana&service=internal&output=atom&num=1","before"=>"", "after"=>"", "ignore_cache"=>"30"));
?>

   I like feedlist because it gives you a great deal of control on how to handle the feed output. The resulting output looks like:
   
   
   
   
   

   Again, you can place this anywhere in your blog. I put it at the very top of my index page above all blog posts.
   
   [Update] - Magpie (which is built into Wordpress now it seems) chokes on FriendFeed entries that are shared with an image or media attached. I’m looking into finding a workaround or solution in the meantime.

4. Add FriendFeed “comments” and “likes” to your blog posts. Unfortunately, this solution only works with Wordpress. Louis Gray and Thomas Hawk are very interested in someone writing something for Blogger. This involves installing the FriendFeed Wordpress plugin by Glenn Slaven. After installing and enabling the plugin, comments made in FriendFeed will be shown on your blog posts. Users can also directly comment to FriendFeed from your blog post. This is very powerful if you wish to combine your own blog comments with FriendFeed comments. This is what it looks like:
   
   
   
   
   
   

These are my favorite ways to enhance my Wordpress blog with FriendFeed, and I’m quite sure there are more ways to do it. What ways have you enhanced your blog with FriendFeed? Has it worked? Leave a comment here or on FriendFeed.

Related Thoughts

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• A Call to Use FriendFeed Rooms for WWDC Keynote
• 7 Ways to Utilize FriendFeed Rooms

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So what makes this so special? Jaiku offered channels a while ago and it didn’t work out to well, so why will FriendFeed Rooms make any difference? No one is exactly sure yet, but here are 7 ways you can possibly utilize them for your purposes:

1. Use rooms to reduce FriendFeed noise. If you do not want to utilize the existing tools for reducing noise (discovery + hide + filters), you can setup FriendFeed not to follow any particular person, but you can join a specific topic based room. This requires little effort and allows the user to get good content fed to them quickly. (This depends on the quality of the content of the room of course)
2. Use rooms as a discussion forum. The layout of FriendFeed is similar to that of discussion forums but lacking in many of the advanced features. But in essence, you have a topic, and comments about a certain topic, giving one a very basic forum. Rooms allow for these forums to be centered around a specific topic, and also make them public or private.
3. Use rooms for live blogging. Someone on FriendFeed suggested this and I thought it was brilliant. You can create a FriendFeed room for live blogging events such as an Apple Keynote, post updates, and have users comment on each update.
4. Use rooms for link aggregation. This is a direct result of FriendFeed’s “Reshare” feature. You could create a FriendFeed room dedicated for links found on the web surrounding a topic. Think of this as a del.icio.us but with discussion. Yes, I know this functionality is available in other places, but a FriendFeed Room could be used for it as well.
5. Use rooms for photography tutorials. Credit Thomas Hawk for this idea. If you combine the Flickr integration with discussions, it makes for a powerful means of providing tips surrounding equipment and techniques. Flickr provides this within their groups, but the strength of FriendFeed lies with discussions and I believe the combination creates something powerful. There are already rooms for DSLR, Flickr Central, and Photowalking.
6. Use rooms to plan events. If you wish to brainstorm ideas surrounding an event, each item can be a post within the room and members can discuss the pros and cons of each idea. This is an easy way to allow your group of people to plan and organize.
7. Use rooms for technical support. This ties into the forum idea, but for small projects, a FriendFeed room could be a great way to track issues with software. If your project is not big enough for Getsatisfaction or Bugzilla, a FriendFeed room could be a quick way to interact with your user base. FriendFeed is using rooms for direct feedback now.

These are just some of the ways I gleaned from conversations on FriendFeed and from my own brain. What are some ways you utilize FriendFeed rooms? Are my methods wrong? A waste of time? Let me know.

Related Thoughts

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• FriendFeed Enhances Podcasting Interactivity With Audio Sharing
• Intense Debate Is the Easy Choice
• A Call to Use FriendFeed Rooms for WWDC Keynote
• 4 Ways to Enhance Your Blog With FriendFeed

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