Twitter vs identi.ca: Comparative Review

The more people know about Twitter, the more entrepreneurs and CIOs there are looking for a platform like ours on which to build.

This is what Identi.ca founder and CEO Evan Prodromou had uttered, marking the rise of another Twitter competitor. Whatever he says, Twitter is here to stay - well set to take up any challenge. Often we come across bloggers gabbling about Twitter replacement. Over the years, we have seen quite a few Twitter rivals cropping up.  FriendFeed, Pownce, Utterz  and even the Google Jaiku raised sparks of hope for those looking for somebody to swoop in and save the day, dethroning Twitter. All of them struggled to get over Twitter’s dominance. Meanwhile the microblogging circuit got a new and strong player. Techies were looking for something with the simplicity of Twitter and stability of FriendFeed. More or less identi.ca fitted the gap perfectly.

You could hear Mashable suggesting,

Drop your Twitter account now and sign up for identi.ca.

However, they were quick to add that only the narrative exists in the mind of tech bloggers rest of the world still continues using Twitter.

Decentralized Twitter

Identi.ca is almost identical with Twitter, but it is an open source and open platform microblogging service. This implies you can host the script and each service would talk to each other to create a distributed and decentralized Twitter. Built on an open platform it can be shared with anyone else  who wants to host their own federated version of the software.

You host a Laconi.ca server to share dents with identi.ca account as well as with anyone else running the same software. This would reduce the stress of down-time that you face with Twitter that have been crippled by now spread out amongst any DIY service-operators/providers.

Thriving Twitter community

The buzzword for Twitter is the community on which it’s thriving and flourishing. Even those who hate the Twitter system, love the Twitter community. None of the microblogging services boasts of a community like Twitter, and Indenti.ca is no exception. Most of the  social bees who fly to other microblogging service scamper back to Twitter. It’s impossible to survive without a community like Twitter.

Scalability

Identi.ca includes a lot of features we like about Twitter, but avoids the shortcomings of Pownce, Jaiku, and Plurk
Briefly, Identi.ca adopts a simple architecture with great potential for scalability. Twitter fails with this.

Some prophesiers suggest services like Twitter would be eventually plagued with scaling problems. Until Twitter reaches a position where scaling turns into an issue, they’d stick to their dreary tweet-babble.

Where’s the snag in identi.ca

Identi.ca is a newbie on the microblogging turf coming up short on several features. Most importantly, it’s needs to work on reply to people. Well, there’s a Greasemonkey script that works for easy replies. Given these, indenti.ca sans search for people or URL shortening is no game to Twitter.

It’s good to see some early adopters working out ways to overcome the shortcomings. For instance, you might come across members using Yahoo Pipe to track replies.

Neck-to-neck

Features

Twitter offers tons of features, and it’s supported by many widgets and apps. Almost every microblogging application or widget supports twitter, for a popular one you can take Twitterific.

Identi.ca takes other tricks up the sleeve. Their API are Twitter-compatible so they would work with third-party features like search, hashtags and analytics.

Making the ends meet

Identi.ca in its bid to match Twitter has introduced - SMS notification, better Jabber/GTalk IM functionality and the ability to auto-follow your followers.

One of the unique additions to Indenti.ca features is the Thwril integration. It is a popular client for twitter/friendfeed/seemic that would attract more users to the service.

Moreover, Identi.ca is also said to have introduced a Twitterfox version called Identifox.

Closed source Twitter Vs open source Identi.ca

Indenti.ca is about OpenMicroBlogging protocol that means users can have friends on other Microblogging services that would receive their notices. Users can build a network on Identi.ca and cross network on other micro-blogging services without any hassles of reconnecting to other networks.

Chuck’s Words held some strong arguments in favor of Identi.ca, especially because it’s an open source.  What remains to be understood is that not all microblogging freaks are techies who can handle the open source.  For them Twitter is overtly user-friendly and feature-packed microblogging site.

Conclusion

No doubt Identi.ca holds a lot of promise, especially being an open source there’s a lot of upgrade and feature-addition we might witness in future. Leading the bunch of clones using the same open source base Indenti.ca.  It remains to see if we can transfer our network between them and build a larger community that could revolutionize the development. Otherwise, Identi.ca would remain a distraction making the centralization and large user base of Twitter seem like a better alternative.

Whatever be the future, at this juncture Identi.ca is far from being a Twitter replacement. Undeniably, Twitter enjoys massive following  cloud.

If Indenti.ca stands any chances that would be Twitter stepping on the wrong foot to repel the community that uses its site on regular basis.