First, in my quest to build Twitter-like microforums for communities, I tried OpenMicroBlogger, which is interesting because it has image and link functions built in. Then I tried laconica, which is great too. Neither fills the need I see. It is starting to look like Yammer comes closest in functionality, but Yammer is hosted and branded as far as I know, so it isn't a contender for me. I'm looking into others, too.
The reason Twitter can't work is that it's too noisy and too general in interest. Let's define "community" as a group of people who share an interest. I think it was in the book The Long Tail that I read that the best-selling book at the on self-publish, print-on-demand Lulu.com is a book about one breed of dog. Talk about a vertical market! There could also be a geographical related element like neighborhoods, cities etc. Since I am interested in wine, let's say I have a tasting group that meets every Thursday night.
So I set up my laconica server and make it known that all 100 people on our list are welcome at the server. Of course in many cases, we'd be talking about hundreds or thousands of members, or more. Now, one of the critical reasons for setting up a private server is that Twitter requires you to follow those you want to "hear". Of course the public timeline can't be followed because it's too much. But in a like-minded community, it probably will NOT be too much to follow the public timeline.
Why follow the public timeline?
This is key to my own needs. This is a community. You have a strong sense of shared interests. It's too much work to find people and follow them. The microforum is the one case where I want to see opt-out rather than opt-in. With this philosophy (like IRC by the way) you enter a channel. You see every comment that goes by. You "auto-discover" all participants, unlike say Twitter.
Why you need an ignore function
In any group there are going to be people you want to ignore or just temporarily shut out. IRC handles this beautifully with the ignore function. Depending on your client setup, ignore (plonk lists on newsgroups) the ignore list may be permanent or just for the session.
My own, admittedly subjective and maybe selfish vision of the microforums (damn it they are not microblogs!) is simple. The simpler the better. The average person isn't a geek delighting in OMB or whatever other acronyms and technologies and they frankly do not care about whether they are on open source or commercial technology.
I want a server that can quickly and easily be set up on our *nix-based shared hosting with these qualities:
- An ignore list as well as a subscribe (follow) list
- Simple admin controls that allow putting unpopular users on a subscribe-only basis
- Groups (Yammer now has this)
Here's my "dream" scenario:
I send people invites to the server. They register and follow the public timeline. Most will do this, checking from time to time, contributing to the talk, using all the existing mechanisms. They have available the option to look at topic groups. These would be decided by the server owner. The members can also opt to follow people and watch only their buddy (subscription) list.
In this day and age much is made of Digg and the rest of shared rating systems. I would like to see the ignore list as data on the server. On the member's profile page, "ignored by" stats next to the subscriptions and "followed by" stats would be interesting. If some percentage of the users (determined by the owners) is ignoring someone, the site admin could be notified by email. Likewise for subscriptions.
What I am suggesting isn't born from a wish to dominate, it's really how most forums are set up. phpBB3 has pretty much all of these tools and communities live comfortably with rules and admin tools.
I believe there's a wonderful future out there for the software that eventually provides the flexibility that makes it easy and fast to enjoy a community microforum.
