The Tweet Stuff

Submitted by Shelley on Sat, 08/08/2009 - 19:13

From RealTech The Tweet Stuff: When it absolutely, positively has to get there:

If we've learned one thing from this week's massive attack against the very fabric of our social connectivity, it's that clouds don't make the best stuff on which to build.

Twitter, in particular, has shown how very vulnerable it is—a vulnerability we share as we become more dependent on Twitter for most of our communication with each other. Oddly enough, I needed to contact someone about a business opportunity just as Twitter universe began to crumble, but all I had was her Twitter name—I couldn't find her email address. Since Twitter was down, I couldn't connect up with her for hours.

I spent a happy day playing with code today. The end result is a new "tweet workflow" that could possibly survive the year 2012.

update I'm still getting familiar with the Twitter/Laconica API, but received a message via my identi.ca account from csarven about remote subscriptions. I can subscribe to identi.ca folks, as well as other Laconica sites, using the REST API. For a Laconica site, attach "?action=remoteSubscribe" to the URL, and you'll get a page to enter the nickname of the person to whom you want to subscribe (at that site), and your remote profile, such as http://laconica.burningbird.net/shelleypowers. Or if you're not logged into the system, just clicking the subscribe button will open the Remote subscription page, automatically.

Once you enter the remote subscription request, you're then taken back to your own site, where you have to accept the request. This prevents spamming. Once accepted, when you access your Home location, the postings from your remote friends will show up, in addition to postings from your friends who are local. You can also reply to the individual.

This functionality is also available for Twitter, built-in, but on my system, trying to use it caused errors. This is a known bug and a fix is currently being developed.

This is truly distributed, and decentralized, connectivity. You can't take a system like this down, no more than you can take all email down, or all weblogs down. Way of the future.

Now, I must find out what other goodies are in the API...

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Comments

Jeff Schiller (not verified)

Sat, 08/08/2009 - 21:16

I agree - a decentralized system is the way to go. Unfortunately I still don't see how you can effectively maintain the two-way flow of communication that makes microblogs important.

You can certainly use this for posting out your status, links, etc - but how can you catch all the interesting incoming links, the re-tweets, etc? Those things are still captured in the centralized systems of Twitter and Facebook and identi.ca which means you still have to watch those systems - and once you're watching those systems, it's a lot easier to reply when you're there.

This is what I've been struggling with, conceptually.

Shelley

Sat, 08/08/2009 - 21:33

I still visit the sites. I'd like to visit less, though, because one can spend a lot of time giggling with folks.

You might say I go to the source for the social stuff, but use my workflow when I want to disseminate new info. Or something.

We'll see how it goes, but it's very easy to post a link to a story now.

Michael Kozakewich (not verified)

Sun, 08/09/2009 - 00:12

I think I slept through the whole Twitter collapse. It stopped working, and I think I thought the internet was down (my connection can be unreliable at night), and by the time I woke up there was enough support that I could still use it.

The thing that's really struck me is how delicate Twitter has always been. From the fail whale to the timeouts, it seems like they just don't have enough servers or something. Just how much money do they make? I've heard they have financial plans, but the entire service is free. Do they have sponsors?

Rob (not verified)

Sun, 08/09/2009 - 10:03

"More importantly, I really don't want to give Google yet more information about me."

Specifically, what is it about "you" that Google is getting and how are they doing it? I don't mean the fact that you, and millions of others, looked up stuff about social networking and threw it into their data canister saying "On this date, one million people Googled Twitter". I mean stuff personal to Shelley Powers that you don't want anyone to know. Like "On this date, Shelley Powers Googled Twitter".

And what information about you does Google collect that no one else does, like Yahoo, Bing, Microsoft, etc.

And what is it you fear Google will do with this information? Do you fear you will enter your address and phone number and Google will publish it on the web for all to view? Do you fear they will sell this information to others?

If so, is there any evidence of them doing this anywhere? I frequently hear people worry over this collection process but have never heard of any instance where this has happened. Nor has anyone ever thought of the consequences to Google, and others, if they should do this.

Shelley

Sun, 08/09/2009 - 13:32

How's this: I don't want to put all my eggs in Google's basket.

Elaine (not verified)

Mon, 08/10/2009 - 17:08

Gregarius: my goodness, I haven't seen that in a long time! IIRC, at once point I had it in mind to create a fork of that. I'm trying to remember if my install was one of the lost items in some previous personal hosting fubar. I've also lost all of my work-related subscriptions in the Outlook Newsgator plugin due to forgetting to back that up before a hard-drive replacement.

This is my issue: I suck at backup. So most of the time, for me, remote hosting tends to be more reliable. OTOH, when it's unreliable, there's nothing I could have done about it. My preferred methodology is a belt-and-suspenders approach, where I can use a (semi-)centralized service while saving a copy elsewhere. That's been one of the things I've liked about delicious, and something I'd love to get running with Pinboard, which otherwise I really like.

I suppose your Laconica to Twitter (etc) workflow does much the same thing. Should I ever have a little chunk of free time (!!!), I'll have to give it a whirl.

The thing I need most to get sorted out is Google Documents. It's been so easy for me, given how many different computers I use, and how often I have to share stuff with random people, to throw everything there. But it makes me a little queasy to think of losing my budget, my neighborhood association board list, bits of fiction writing, newsletter articles, remodeling notes.... That whole eggs-in-one-basket thing. I gotta figure out something to do about that.