identi.ca is an open source

Open source

The term open source describes practices in production and development that promote access to the end product's source materials. Some consider open source a philosophy, others consider it a pragmatic methodology...

 social networking and micro-blogging

Micro-blogging

Microblogging is a broadcast medium in the form of blogging. A microblog differs from a traditional blog in that its content is typically smaller in both actual and aggregate file size...

 service. Based on StatusNet, a micro-blogging software package built on the OpenMicroBlogging

OpenMicroBlogging

OpenMicroBlogging is an open protocol that allows different microblogging services to inter-operate. It lets the user of one service subscribe to notices by a user of another service. This enables a federation of new communities, as potentially an organization of any size can host a service...

 specification, Identi.ca allows users to send text updates (known as "notices") up to 140 characters long. While similar to Twitter

Twitter

Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...

 in both concept and operation, Identi.ca provides many features not currently implemented by Twitter, including XMPP

Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol

Extensible Messaging and Presence Protocol is an open-standard communications protocol for message-oriented middleware based on XML . The protocol was originally named Jabber, and was developed by the Jabber open-source community in 1999 for near-real-time, extensible instant messaging , presence...

 support and personal tag clouds. In addition, Identi.ca allows free export and exchange of personal and "friend" data based on the FOAF

FOAF (software)

FOAF is a machine-readable ontology describing persons, their activities and their relations to other people and objects. Anyone can use FOAF to describe him or herself...

 standard; therefore, notices can be fed into a Twitter account or other service, and also ported in to a private system similar to Yammer

Yammer

Yammer is an enterprise social network service that was launched in September 2008. Unlike Twitter, which is used for broadcasting messages to the public, Yammer is used for private communication within organizations or between organizational members and pre-designated groups, making it an example...

.

The service received more than 8,000 registrations and 19,000 updates within the first 24 hours of publicly launching on July 1, 2008, and reached its 1,000,000th notice on November 4, 2008. In January 2009, identi.ca received investment funds from a Montreal

Montreal

Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...

-based venture capital

Venture capital

Venture capital is financial capital provided to early-stage, high-potential, high risk, growth startup companies. The venture capital fund makes money by owning equity in the companies it invests in, which usually have a novel technology or business model in high technology industries, such as...

 group.

On March 30, 2009 Control Yourself (since renamed StatusNet Inc) announced that Identi.ca was to become part of a hosted microblogging service called status.net to be launched in May 2009. Status.net offers individual microblogs under a subdomain to be chosen by the customer. Identi.ca will remain a free service. All notices will be published under the Creative Commons Attribution

Creative Commons licenses

Creative Commons licenses are several copyright licenses that allow the distribution of copyrighted works. The licenses differ by several combinations that condition the terms of distribution. They were initially released on December 16, 2002 by Creative Commons, a U.S...

 3.0 license by default, but paying customers will be free to choose a different license.

See also

• Brightkite
  Brightkite
  Brightkite is a location-based social networking website that is available on any mobile device. Users "check in" at places by using text messaging or one of the mobile applications and they can see who is nearby and who has been there before. The service was created in 2007 by Brady Becker, Martin...
  
  
• Comparison of microblogging services
• Jaiku
  Jaiku
  Jaiku is a social networking, micro-blogging and lifestreaming service comparable to Twitter. Jaiku was founded in February 2006 by Jyri Engeström and Petteri Koponen from Finland and launched in July of that year...
  
  
• Qaiku
  Qaiku
  Qaiku is a micro-blogging and lifestreaming service comparable to Twitter and Jaiku. It allows users to post short text or picture messages that other users can then comment...
  
  
• Twitter
  Twitter
  Twitter is an online social networking and microblogging service that enables its users to send and read text-based posts of up to 140 characters, informally known as "tweets".Twitter was created in March 2006 by Jack Dorsey and launched that July...
  
  

External links

• identi.ca
• OpenMicroBlogging standard
• status.net
• Identiquette: Etiquette guidelines for identi.ca