Precisely. I don’t think IRC is mainstream. I see more geeks reluctantly signing up on facebook (is that what you call a proprietary “experiment” ?) by their mum’s pressure than mothers convinced to use IRC. I don’t think the global movement is towards openness. But I hope I’m wrong.

I’m not saying twitter is bad. It would be great if it was more interoperable with other microblogs.

Is it just me or people tend to use more brand names instead of common names : ipod to say mp3 player, iphone when they mean smartphone, twitter instead of microblogging, …

What’s the brand name for monoculture again ? I’ll check in a wiktionary…

> I don’t really understand this.

I guess probably because you don’t use Twitter. I have my browser open more often than I check my email. Also, due to its brevity, Twitter communications feel more like a quick conversation than email whose length is at the author’s whim.

> In the “good old days”, people were using protocols and standards. Now I see an explosion of proprietary services usage. Unique and closed services that are not interoperable. Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and the whole bunch of others social networks.

> This is scary.

I guess I’m not as scared as you. There is movement towards an Open Social pardigm. And it will happen eventually. Walled gardens don’t really last (AOL).

> We missed the IM opportunity with MSN years ago. And XMPP couldn’t overtake it.

Beg to differ there. IRC came first and that’s still going strong in the geek community and it’s an open RFC. I use Jabber every day at work. I guess it all depends on what you mean by ‘overtake’. There will always be proprietary experiments and platforms.

> Tell me Jeff, why on earth do you use Twitter if you could just do the same with a self hosted atom/rss ?

As I’ve tried to indicate in this post and my comment, the value in Twitter is the other people that are using it. A self-hosted solution would not work on its own because that would be only one-way communication.

I’m also aware of (and on) identi.ca, which uses an open source version of twitter (laconica) that you can self-host (though I do not). I’m just not clear on whether you can decentralize it and get the same experience as Twitter yet.

I don’t really understand this.

In the “good old days”, people were using protocols and standards. Now I see an explosion of proprietary services usage. Unique and closed services that are not interoperable. Facebook, Twitter, MySpace, and the whole bunch of others social networks.

This is scary.

And the first to connect to these are non geeks. Because they don’t understand the real difference between communicating with boring open e-mail and fun closed facebook.

We missed the IM opportunity with MSN years ago. And XMPP couldn’t overtake it.

Tell me Jeff, why on earth do you use Twitter if you could just do the same with a self hosted atom/rss ?

I’ve actually thought about deleting my old “tweets”, primarily to demonstrate the ephemeral nature of Twitter…Well, when Twitter itself isn’t losing my old tweets.

If one sees Twitter as a harmless way to pass some time, perhaps share something new, I think it’s OK. But the biggest danger I see with it is that it can suck up time, and leave nothing to show for it. And it can fragment information, like shards of the glass one dropped and can’t see on the kitchen floor.

What if there was a way we could host our own messages, as well as ones directed at us? Could just be copies of the ones hosted on twitter. Far from an ideal solution, but it would solve the basic problem you had. Wouldn’t be surprised if someone’s already created a method of doing that.

As for adding that option-hiding option, I think I meant to do that but didn’t get around to it. May just make it the default. Thanks for the reminder!

I use twitter a lot because that’s where people are. It bothers me that I don’t get better access to my data or the conversations I’ve had but I can’t let that keep me from participating.

As for your other point about putting too much value in Twitter: Unfortunately it does have just enough good qualities that people use it – and that will inevitably result in some form of conversation.

The problem with IRC is that not enough people use it and it requires people to actually be present to be effective. The problem with email is that it’s not instantaneous enough (and you have to contend with spam). Twitter is really a creepy in-breeding between instant messaging and email that gained a critical mass of users. Now it doesn’t matter how crappy their implementation is, it’s the people using it that are driving the value (positive feedback).