Identi.ca vs. Twitter – Why I prefer Identi.ca
Twitter has been growing exponentially since its launch in March of 2006. Twitter has even found its way into the news and reached new audiences. This is all well and good for Twitter, but my experience with the service was less than optimal.
A little history: I resisted the insistent pull of Twitter until 2007, arguing that I didn't have any need to let people know I was taking a shit or going to the adult video store. A close friend convinced me that it just wasn't like that and I should give it a try. So I relented and created an account.
I am a huge fan of XMPP and services that utilize that technology. Twitter had marvelous support for XMPP which meant I could receive and post tweets via my favorite instant messaging client. I could even track topics so that if anyone posted something related, I would see it.
A mere two months into enjoying Twitter (and I was enjoying the ego rush), and the XMPP interface began to suffer. Checking status updates were throttled, the track feature was disabled and updates didn't come through as they were posted. It was about this time that I started looking for other social status sites and discovered identi.ca.
Identi.ca launched in July of 2008 as an alternative to Twitter and other social status networks like Plurk and Jaiku. Some of the key differences: the code that drives the site, Laconica is open source under the GNU Affero General Public License; the Laconica servers are federated so that subscribers do not need to be on the same site; built-in support for tags and groups, a rapidly evolving platform based on user feedback and developer drive.
That's all well and good, but how is using identi.ca more enjoyable than Twitter? As I "dented" (a term I wish would go away) here, conversations happen where Twitter seems to be much more focused on marketing, both for the service itself and for the celebrities that have flocked to it.
Here is one example of just such a conversation:
Another feature that makes identi.ca a real joy is the group feature. Similar to the track feature of Twitter, groups allow users with similar interests to send notices to an entire group. Its implementation couldn't be any simpler. Preface a term with a ! and it posts to that group. If the group doesn't exist, you're given an option to create it. This can lead to abuse however when !someone !overuses !the !group option in a notice.
Identi.ca also supports hashtags. Begin a word with # and it becomes a hashtag, a term that can help identify the content of a notice. For example: How do I get my !n810 to make #free phone calls? In this context, !n810 will send the notice to everyone in that group and the notice itself gets tagged with 'free' and 'n810'. Group notifiers double as hashtags.
All of these features plus the geeky group at identi.ca make for a much more pleasant experience for me and lower the signal-to-noise ratio of my internet experience.
