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Status.net and Pump.io are already distributed, open-source replacements for Twitter.

1. What sites are out there that implement OStatus? I know of

http://rstat.us/
http://identi.ca/
http://status.net/

To start with, every site running StatusNet implements it. Here are a few lists of independent StatusNet sites:

• List of Independent StatusNet Instances
• List of Federated Users
• Another list of StatusNet sites, organised topically, also with links to some other lists

There's also an OStatus plug-in for WordPress, a set of OStatus-bridge apps for Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.

And there are plenty of other sites/platforms that support enough parts of the OStatus stack to be useful (like PuSH, which is the part that allows you to `follow' people on other sites); e.g.: even if your blog-platform doesn't support PuSH, you can run it through FeedBurner and that will make it PuSH-enabled (which is how I get notices from mimiandeunice.com in my StatusNet timeline, for example).

There are probably others that I haven't listed or that I don't know about; when I find new OStatus-related things, I bookmark them on my OStatus-compatible microblog.

2. What good and complete tutorials are there for implementing OSTatus? The ones I tried broke my brain. I want less theory and words, at least initially, and more (pseudo) code. Let's start simple: What do I need to do to make my CMS "folllowable" from the three sites above, for example?

Start with `How to OStatus-enable Your Application'.

1. What sites are out there that implement OStatus? I know of

http://rstat.us/
http://identi.ca/
http://status.net/

To start with, every site running StatusNet implements it. Here are a few lists of independent StatusNet sites:

• List of Independent StatusNet Instances
• List of Federated Users
• Another list of StatusNet sites, organised topically, also with links to some other lists

There's also an OStatus plug-in for WordPress, a set of OStatus-bridge apps for Facebook, Twitter, and Google+.

And there are plenty of other sites/platforms that support enough parts of the OStatus stack to be useful (like PuSH, which is the part that allows you to `follow' people on other sites); e.g.: even if your blog-platform doesn't support PuSH, you can run it through FeedBurner and that will make it PuSH-enabled (which is how I get notices from mimiandeunice.com in my StatusNet timeline, for example).

There are probably others that I haven't listed or that I don't know about; when I find new OStatus-related things, I bookmark them on my OStatus-compatible microblog.

2. What good and complete tutorials are there for implementing OSTatus? The ones I tried broke my brain. I want less theory and words, at least initially, and more (pseudo) code. Let's start simple: What do I need to do to make my CMS "folllowable" from the three sites above, for example?

Start with `How to OStatus-enable Your Application'.

1. What sites are out there that implement OStatus? I know of

http://rstat.us/
http://identi.ca/
http://status.net/

2. What good and complete tutorials are there for implementing OSTatus? The ones I tried broke my brain. I want less theory and words, at least initially, and more (pseudo) code. Let's start simple: What do I need to do to make my CMS "folllowable" from the three sites above, for example? Too much theory makes me impatient, I need something simple that works and which I can enhance/refactor. So far, I'm stumped. Help? Any other ideas?

One thing is sure, Twitter has never been anything but shit, same for facebook, and app.net is just another dead end, too. So let's skip to the non-bullshit part, even though it's tedious and scary (certainly for me ^^), and get to the actual protocols that are not just a waste of time...

Why shouldn't [blogging or forum software of choice] support OStatus? Why should you not be able to "follow" posters, threads, categories or tags -- ? And if OStatus isn't good enough for that, what is, or how can we make it? I say "we", though I'm a shitty coder, but you get the idea.

If Twitter was really based on an open source model, they would have fixed that 160 character limit a long time ago; It's a relic of a bygone era.

The identica people can't seem to decide on a limit.

http://status.net/2010/02/15/identi-ca-character-limit-results

http://status.net/wiki/Identica/web

This is very much like the desktop publishing situation in the 80s... people whining that they can't express themselves without using 45 different fonts and 5 colors on a page... Newsflash is they can't express themselves... at all... a tech feature isn't going to fix that.

If Twitter was really based on an open source model, they would have fixed that 160 character limit a long time ago; It's a relic of a bygone era.

The identica people can't seem to decide on a limit.

http://status.net/2010/02/15/identi-ca-character-limit-results

http://status.net/wiki/Identica/web

This is very much like the desktop publishing situation in the 80s... people whining that they can't express themselves without using 45 different fonts and 5 colors on a page... Newsflash is they can't express themselves... at all... a tech feature isn't going to fix that.

i think [diaspora's] data model gives advantage to the node owners, which patch their nodes to store everything they can get

There's no way around that--once you give your information to someone, they have it. Either you trust them with it, or you don't. If you don't trust someone to keep your secrets, don't tell them; i.e.: keep your secrets to yourself--run your own node.

maybe BuddyCloud?

How about StatusNet? It's what runs identi.ca, all of the various status.net sites, all of the sites collected in this guy's list, and a whole bunch of sites probably not in that list. I've got several different StatusNet sites I run, for example.

I'm the one who coined the name, and yes... it's been pointed out already: http://evan.status.net/notice/1367418

Two free culture non-profit foundations, one cup.

I have a good sense of humor about it, though. :)

It is entirely possible to deploy internal IM services, with free software like openfire, which uses the same protocol as google talk and facebook, without the need to expose internal data and keeping a central log of every conversation. For the twitter necessities there is Status.Net, which powers open-source twitter clone identi.ca, that can be installed internally and seems to be API compatible with twitter clients.
I am not advocating substitution of email messages, but sometimes IM can be very useful on a corporation, taking the right steps to keep security and accountability. It is really very useful to help desk staff, for example.

The awesome folk at statusnet have posted this : http://status.net/2011/04/01/new-federated-social-bookmarks-service-freelish-us So basically, that's statusnet + a plugin to add tags , and sahre them lie any microblogging tool, and it is federated. You can install your own service on your server if you want, or use one hosted somewhere. Too bad, the statusnet package in debian is still not uploaded ( http://bugs.debian.org/cgi-bin/bugreport.cgi?bug=491723 ).

And while you're at it, support more than 140 chars, or allow compression, or something.

Already done.

Diaspora, despite the rocky start, seems to be the most active project working on this. I hope it thrives.

*cough* Appleseed, StatusNet/Identica (which is an official StatusNet instance on the bleeding edge, popular among open-source types like myself).

Not to forget that StatusNet is one of the many social networks that supports the OStatus protocol, a way to follow people on different networks and websites.

Or Status.net even?

I think they call that Satatus.Net.

Thank you. Looking again, I'd missed the link to this page.

Ummm. they're basing it on OStatus. I'd prefer to see XMPP because security and granular permissions are already solved there, but OStatus is an open protocol.

Your basic widgets are pretty straightforward to implement on multiple systems, but what eats up time and effort is indeed things like getting layout to feel like it fits in the system, and to integrate with native widget styles, dialogs, or UI conventions that are different. (Use a system icon there, a menu here; a nav bar at top here, submit/cancel buttons at the bottom there.)

For StatusNet Mobile which we built with Titanium we've had to do a lot of special-casing to get various parts of the UI looking and feeing a little more native on each system, and we've still got a number of dialogs that need more work. The majority of our UI though is in a webview, which is nicely universal. ;)

Tying into low-level platform integration can be a bit more difficult too; being able to 'share' messages out to other apps that accept the Action.SEND intent or text/plain for instance required tossing in a low-level module to hook into the Android system code directly, which was more awkward than I'd prefer.

The key to social network interoperability is the 'OStatus' suite of protocols and formats. Diaspora will be implementing this, but what really exited me the other day was the first open source implementations of OStatus communication between Status.net (wot powers identi.ca, etc) and itself (screencast is available via the link above) based on the Federated Social Web's SWAT0 test, and then shortly afterwards other systems (MiniMe). Work is under way to implement this in other systems such as ELGG, Drupal, WordPress, Google Buzz, Diaspora, etc. Some probably slightly out of date info on this can be found on the Status.net wiki.

This is probably a good time to mention the Linuxy, freeish, openish alternative to Twitter:

http://identi.ca/

And if you don't like Identi.ca, create your own microblogging system with StatusNet:

http://status.net/

I believe Sir is speaking of StatusNet and identi.ca.

I don' use twitter in any way, but I think I saw it's usefulness during the protests in Iran.

Imagine Twitter with Free code and a non-profit, donations based model. Surely humankind could set that up, everyone paying what they can. It should work, IMO. I'd pay some :s, just as soon as I can muster any income and a bank account. I expect the finances being open and any monetary need (for hosting or whatever) addressed swiftly by the haves of the community.

Incidentally, half the work has all ready been done: http://identi.ca/ and http://status.net/

There already is. It's called StatusNet, and one seemingly popular (meaning, the one I know if) implementation is Identi.ca.

People don't seem to be aware that many, many people and projects have been working on Open Web solutions to this problem. See OStatus: http://ostatus.org/ and http://status.net/wiki/OStatus/Interop

Please don't leave out StatusNet. http://status.net/ and OStatus http://ostatus.org/ IRC: #statusnet on freenode It's an AGPL social networking platform, complete with a federated message bus built on Open Web standards that anyone can install and run on his/her own server or commodity hosting setup. No, it's not a 100% perfect replacement for Facebook as it stands (although a pretty good replacement for Twitter). But it could be. Why not build on the two years of work that's gone into it, instead of starting over from scratch, or trying to bolt on federation to a piece of software that was never designed to be distributed. The constant reinventing of the wheel is frustrating.

I really don't get this. Everyone seems to be talking about Diaspora, which is still vaporware, when there are actual products that work right now. You can either go with the StatusNet + plugins route (implementing OStatus), or you can choose OneSocialWeb (XMPP+extensions). Both are Free software. OSW is Apache licensed, FFS: how much more could you ask for?

Both of these products actually exist and work now. StatusNet is mature. OSW is still alpha, but fairly complete. It would be much better for everyone to hitch their wagons to one of these than to support some college students who may or may not know what they're doing and whose goal appears to be to "scrape Twitter and Flickr." That will never work. You have to be able to post status updates, pictures, videos, and blogs all within the same interface and have people be able to comment on or "Like" directly from that same interface. You can't expect people to leave Facebook for something cobbled together from pieces and lacking half the functionality.

I hope I'm wrong about this project.

Indeed. And there's all ready the compatible open source code for it in http://status.net/

But the only good thing about twitter, afaict, is the centralization that allows total strangers worldwide to follow an important topic. Instant reach to whomever it may interest in the world is pretty nifty for raising awareness of shit that affects people.

So, if ISPs got their respective "microblogging" servers, the worldwidedness of it all should be worked out somehow, through some sort of collaboration.

One word: http://autonomo.us/

Ok, well, two: http://www.opendefinition.org/ossd/

http://wordpress.org/ http://status.net/ and http://drupalgardens.com/ are already leading by example.

You mean, something like a private twitter, with plenty of mobile apps?

The question is, how would the "service" know what room and activity the doctor would be doing? You can't expect them to be writing that stuff every time...

You mean, something like a private twitter, with plenty of mobile apps?

The question is, how would the "service" know what room and activity the doctor would be doing? You can't expect them to be writing that stuff every time...

StatusNet is a neat platform that runs Identica, a twitter alternative. It's free as in freedom (GNU AGPL), and it has pretty much every feature twitter has and more. You can view conversations people have instead of searching for hours for who-responded-to-what-and-how-many-people-were-involved. You can customize the theme and upload files, too! There's lots of other optional features you can use as well, and it has a similar API to twitter, so lots of applications already support it. Try it out and see if it works for you; you can even chose where it's hosted!

Exactly what I thought as well. I have a feeling the Twitter API was picked since status.net supports it too http://status.net/wiki/Twitter-compatible_API.

I'm surprised these open source project haven't implemented the open source microblogging standard put forth by status.net (former laconi.ca). Its ability to handle cross-site microblogging is rather interesting and more appropriate for these platforms, IMO.