Even if you use only Twitter and have some close friends, co-workers or your own company, you would want to set up an OpenMicroBlogging site that communicates with Twitter. Here's why.
Evan pointed out to me just now on http://identi.ca that Laconica isn't meant to be a front end for Twitter. I'm just pointing out that it can be used that way, that it's a nice feature but not the principal interest of Laconica.
Twitter is not under your control, it has outages (like anything in the cloud). If you set up Laconica (or other software) instance on your own server,
Members can configure their Tweets to be sent to Twitter AND keep them archived and they remain searchable on your server.
Members can subscribe to friends on Twitter or indenti.ca and see their activity on your/their server.
You can set up a "network" of these communities on the model of say, branch offices of your company or your family.
You can communicate with any other Laconica instance.
Currently, Laconica works with Twhirl, which is an excellent thing. If you like
TweetDeck (in beta, but looks very promising) you should consider visiting their site and
voting for Laconica support.
Laconica isn't necessarily to replace Twitter, it is a tool, like Twhirl or Tweetdeck,
to be that can used with Twitter. It shines on its own, of course, but the use with Twitter makes it easier for some.
I just installed an instance from scratch to see how long it took. I tried to document what I did here:
http://tr.im/ageless but I probably missed some things.
Laconica remains my favorite choice today only because of Twhirl support and its stability to date. OpenMicroBlogger.org is certainly a viable choice if you want to access only on the web. Their plugin archetecture is a winning idea and a whole ecosystem could evolve around that in this day of published API.
The rest of this will be about the name (again) and making more people aware of Laconica.
I am choosing to call the tool variously known as laconi.ca, identi.ca and laconica as Laconica.
A discussion has been going on for something like two months on the laconica mailing list about clarifying the name. I don't want to get involved in this step personally, but anyone with $8 and good intentions could have purchased laconica.org by now.
Laconica needs an identifiable, memorable, recognizable "brand", regardless of the future envisioned by its creators. I vote for
Laconica.
Laconica also needs a home page along the lines of world class software like phpBB. When you search, you'll find that page and when you lmand on it, it's agreeable to look at. In fact, gee, it looks just like an instance of phpBB. Branding. On that home page is a concise two-paragraph concept statement, a little braggy, but hey phpBB's penetration is huge.
Laconica set up and configuration isn't hard for the average person who installs most php-based systems. It does need some obvious clean up in the page that talks about it. Software that has only a README for documentation is usually in the embryonic stage, which Laconica is not. I was in the #laconica IRC channel today and the readme link went to a page that said "do not use these instructions..." and linked to... the
README!
I suggest someone take the
README, go through a new install with someone who wants one. Note step by step to make sure it actually works. Then using techniques developed in what, the 18th century, use things like agreeable typeface, font sizes bold, italic, a document convention to make it look like something someone has actually cared about explaining.
I suggest that if you care about Laconica, you'll go
vote for TweetDeck to work with it. The mindset is,
talk about Laconica, make it more known. The more interest there is in a tool, the better chance it will have to emerge from the sea of "Twitter clones"
and get a life of its own.
To do list
Name it Laconica once and for all and move on!
Get a standard domain name even if it has an extra word like laconicaproject.org (or .net or .com).
Make a small home page that is clear as to what the tool does and how great OMB is.
Explain in simple understandable language how Laconica works with Twhirl and Twitter and of course say that you need neither for it to work, these are just great options.
You do know that Twhirl allows multiple accounts so that Twitter addicts can use Laconica, Twitter, FriendFeed and other stuff in multiple windows?
Here's a
trimmed link to this post (http://tr.im/twitonica).
