In the absence of real interoperability between the different microblogging and messaging services, Twitter, which already has the most users, will only gain momentum. With Identi.ca and Laconi.ca, we do have real, open-source, standard-based alternatives to Twitter, but the sheer momentum behind Twitter will make it increasingly hard for newcomers to break through to a large enough audience.

In many ways, this is quite a shame, as most of the innovation around Twitter has come from third-party developers, while services like Rejaw, for example, tried out a lot of interesting features and user interfaces. Rejaw, for example, made 'real' real-time messaging a core feature of its platform.

While Google has not confirmed this new search engine just yet, the company's search products chief Marissa Mayer hints that there may have been something like this in the works at Google for some time now: "...we are interested in being able to offer, for example, micro-blogging and micro-messaging in our search. Particularly in Blog Search and possibly in Web Search, but we don't have any particular plans to announce". The Google Operating System blog points to this description used in Google's localization service as further evidence that there is something going on. It is allegedly a phrase that Google wants translated to be multilingual:

"Recent updates about QUERY. This is the MicroBlogsearch Universal result group header text. A Microblog is a blog with very short entries. Twitter is the popular service associated with this format."

This is not proof-positive that Google is developing a microblogging search engine, but it makes sense that they would. Twitter and other microblogging platforms are rich with information could be used to rank messages. Reportedly the search results will appear based on frequently used keywords or current events, but a whole bunch of other factors could play a role in providing relevant results. The number of followers a person has, the author's authority in Twitter's social graph, replies, re-tweets, posting frequency and other stats could be used. We hope Google is paying attention to current microblogging trends and will include those results in any microblogging search engine it may or may not be working on.

StatusNet is the open-source microblogging platform that powers sites such as identi.ca, which impressed us from its inception as a "framework for a distributed network of federated microblogging services." Read on for more details on what Vibber will be doing there.

Vibber hard at work at the Wikimedia Foundation office.

And according to this StatusNet announcement, Vibber's job description will revolve around "architecture and development of the core StatusNet microblogging software, as well as ancillary services to support the status.net platform." And in addition to launching a first release and public signup over the next few months, it is hoped by StatusNet leadership that Vibber's "natural skills as a mentor and leader will help build our Open Source developer and user community."

Although Vibber's new duties will commence on October 12, he will continue to be involved in Wikimedia development and will remain in the Wikimedia office until the end of 2009 "to make sure all our tech staff has a chance to pick my brain as we smooth out the code review processes and make sure things are as well documented as I like to think they are," he wrote.

In an interesting study in open-source, free-as-in-freedom/free-as-in-beer cross-pollination, StatusNet founder Evan Prodromou is also known for his work in the wiki community, launching Wikitravel and helping with MediaWiki development.

That's news to us. Everything these days is about Twitter, though. Go to a party--talk about Twitter. Have a blog? Talk about Twitter. Use Twitter? Talk about Twitter. Apparently we can add to that: facing legal pressure over allegedly anti-competitive business practices? Talk about Twitter. There's absolutely no more information available about this - but below are three possible scenarios we can imagine for Google integrating microblogging into its search product.

Real Time Search

The most logical integration of microblogging and search would be microblogging search. Google already indexes Twitter messages, in some ways better than Twitter does. We can imagine "real time" being an option just like web, news, images and blogs on Google search. Here at ReadWriteWeb we use this tool to have that experience already. There is a whole lot that can be done with something like Twitter search if the user accounts tweeting the twits and twats are taken into account. Check out the nascent awesomeness at Twazzup, for example.

This probably isn't going to happen, though, as long as Twitter is the only microblogging game in town. There just isn't a meaningful data set of publicly available status updates elsewhere. Facebook status messages would be great to search but that would contradict the fundamental nature of the site - and Microsoft has a lot of skin in the game there.

We're hoping that open source microblogging technology from Laconi.ca will spread throughout the land and give engines something other than Twitter to search.

Augmenting Pagerank

Inbound links are the primary way that Google determines what's a good page to serve up for any search query. Fresh links from the micro-blogo-o-sphere could well augment the traditional metric with some timeliness.

This is something we explored yesterday in a post about Twitter and how it is not going to index the pages you share links to. It's going to have 3rd party companies perform that function and maybe buy one or more of them.

We don't think Google is going to integrate microblogging in this way though. Why not? Because it would be silly. Google is already fast enough, good enough and doggone it - people like it.

What Are You Doing?

You know what's most likely? That Google will add the equivelant of "what are you doing?" to its search interface. Perhaps "what are you searching for?" Messages posted and available to read through that interface will be to and from your Google Contacts. (That's the people you Gmail with, basically.) Google is making a big push for people to take their Google Profiles more seriously and one consequence of that could be a well populated social graph for users.

Friends could help answer the questions you're asking of Google or they could let you know what they are doing, like a home town version of Google News. If you check out Google Friend Connect, imagining that integrated into search isn't hard at all.

Social search and status sharing. It's a lot less crazy than Google's search wiki.

The paradigm of status sharing and activity streams is just too compelling for Google to stay out of it. Maybe they will buy FriendFeed. Maybe they will build something themselves and maybe it will be good.

Schmidt's hint yesterday only makes sense, though. How can you imagine the integration of microblogging into search looking?

The Schmidt story was found in Brad Williamson's excellent FriendFeed group Media News and Analysis - thanks Brad!

Web 2.0, cloud computing, Internet TV and RFID are all labeled "transformational" by Gartner, meaning that they are predicted to have a big impact on the market. Microblogging is only ranked "moderate," so Gartner doesn't think that Twitter is a very meaningful technology.

We can't help but feel that Gartner may be underestimating the impact of microblogging. It remarks that services like Twitter enable "new kinds of fast, witty, easy-to assimilate exchanges." Microblogging is rated as having a "moderate" impact on business, however Gartner does not analyze the over-arching trend of Real-time web that microblogging exemplifies. They do make a good point that "channel pollution" is a current issue with these services, however this is where the ecosystem of search and filtering products - around Twitter especially - are proving their worth. See also our post earlier today about the new distributed forms of microblogging that may rise to take Twitter's place over time.

Gartner states that Cloud computing is "changing the way the IT industry looks at user and vendor relationships." It points to vendors such as Amazon.com, Google, Microsoft and salesforce.com.

Regarding eBooks, Gartner has a bob each way: "This technology is potentially revolutionary if the issues that have suppressed adoption are addressed." It lists Amazon.com, Fujitsu, Plastic Logic and Sony as sample vendors.

Gartner's conclusion about RFID is similar to our own - that it's moving slowly. Gartner notes that "the number of leading retailers working with it [RFID] did not grow greatly through 2008 and will not grow significantly during the next two years."

On Web 2.0, Gartner archly notes that "the Web 2.0 hype has peaked as constituencies vie for the next generation of the Web." However it also puts Web 2.0 in the "early mainstream" and is bullish on its future. Note: we reviewed the latest attempt at the next buzzword, Web squared, last week.

Overall, this report is an interesting high level view of the state of technology. It's quite business focused though, so Gartner perhaps overlooks some of the more exciting new consumer Web trends that we've been writing about this year on ReadWriteWeb: real-time Web, Internet of Things, mobile web, to name a few.

Shouts and Whispers

Rejaw differentiates between sending out 'shouts,' which go out to all of your followers as well as the public timeline, and 'whispers,' which are direct and private messages.

At the bottom of the page, you can always see if there are any new 'shouts' or 'whispers' and clicking on those links will take you directly to the appropriate pages.

As is to be expected, every conversation on Rejaw also gets its own permalink and Rejaw also provides RSS feeds for all conversations.

Payloads

One very cool aspect of Rejaw is that you can just post links to images (we tested this with jpg and png files), YouTube and Google videos, as well as mp3 and flv files into your posts and they will immediately appear in a mediaplayer in your timeline. The team behind Rejaw is also responsible for Lingr, which uses the same technology at the back-end.

API

Right from the start, Rejaw offers an API to developers who want to integrate the service into their own tools.

Verdict

So how does Rejaw stack up against Twitter and its brethren? In trying out the service for a while this morning, we really enjoyed the immediate interaction with others on the site. We only noticed one minor bug with regards to deleting already posted messages on the site, but otherwise, the service feels extremely well thought out already and we didn't experience any other issues in our tests. We especially liked how easy it was to embed videos, pictures, and audio into the posts and comments.

If you would like to add me to your friends on Rejaw, you can find my profile here.

Many new services struggle to build a developer community around their platform. By being compatible with Twitter, though, Identi.ca's developer pool is now virtually identical with Twitter's developer community, which means that it is only a matter of time before Twitter clients like Twhirl, Snitter, or TweetBox will make posting to Identi.ca an option.

As Twitter is making it more and more difficult for some third-party developers to hook into its API by severely restricting the number of calls any given application can make within a certain time period, Identi.ca will probably see a lot more interest from developers in the near future.

1. Define Your Object: This is the easy part, but perhaps most important. The social object will be the center of your network. On eBay, it's whatever item you're selling or buying. On Amazon, it's a product. On Flickr, it's a photo and so on. 
2. Define Your Verbs: This means what do you want people to do with your social object. Do you want them to comment? Rate it? Share it? Watch it? Etc. Make sure whatever action they should take is clear and highly visible on the site.
3. Make the Objects Shareable: This is almost a no-brainer, but you would be surprised how many sites have not made it easy (or even possible!) to share the object which their site is centered around.
4. Turn Invitations into Gifts: Want your friends to join you on the network? Don't just spam them with an invite, send them something of value. Jyri mentioned how a purchase of a Skype headset years ago also included a set for a friend. Also, PayPal had originally offered a small amount of money posted to the account of your friends who signed up for the service.
5. Charge the Publishers, Not the Spectators: On any network, there are those who are creating and those who are passively consuming the content. You shouldn't charge the latter, only the former. The people who are actively using the service and are getting value from it in some way are the ones who would be willing to pay for additional features or, in some cases, just to use the service itself.

An interesting parallel to #5 is the online news industry. Today, many publishers are tossing around ideas about charging for their online content. This actually goes against his final key principal, which may be why some of those ventures won't be as successful as the publishers hope.

Although Jyri Engestrom has not published the slideshow that he used during the presentation, the one embedded below has many of the exact same slides, including the five principles. However, you may be surprised to learn that this one was uploaded to Slideshare two years ago. Even though, it seems the subject matter is still as relevant today as it was back then.

Do you agree that these principles have held up over time? Or does this list need to be modified or changed in some way?

What's even better is that you can click on the notification in the Activity Stream to see all the relevant details. If the item was an image, for example, you can preview it or download the original. For blog posts and wiki pages, you can click to read the item that was updated. Plus, you can download any files that have been added straight from the Activity Stream to your desktop.

However, the cyn.in desktop client isn't just about automated notifications - it allows for those personal updates, too. But this is the enterprise, mind you, so we're not calling them "tweets" here - they are "status updates" instead. Guided by the prompt "What are you doing?" anyone can quickly set their status update which is then sent into the Activity Stream to update everyone else.

Taking a page from Jaiku's book, the client also includes a threaded discussions feature. Any item in the stream can be commented on whether it's an automated update or a personal status update. The replies can be viewed in a pop-up sidebar to the right of the original Activity Stream, just as with photos, wikis, and blog updates. Like FriendFeed, when someone comments on an item, that item bubbles up to the top so everyone is immediately alerted.

As any Twitter user could tell you, no microblogging product would be complete without search, and cyn.in is no exception. When you need to find something that had been posted before and has since fallen off the page, you can enter in a query straight into the desktop client itself. The results returned are ranked for you according to the percentage match and you can scroll through them just as you can with the Activity Stream.

The cyn.in client is beautiful implementation of how microblogging could (and perhaps should) work for businesses, but it's the client's integration with the cyn.in team collaboration suite that makes it so worthwhile. Of course, the decision to move away from your company's current collaboration suite is not one to be made lightly, so you should review the suite's features before deciding if it's right for you.

Other enterprise microblogging clients include Yammer, Present.ly, and Status, but none offer an integrated collaboration suite, too. Cyn.in is open source, but it can also be purchased as a hosted service or as an enterprise appliance.

Google has been rolling up no end of very young mobile services; while the comparison with the Dodgeball acquisition, which ended up going nowhere, is inevitable - I think there's a lot more going on this time around. For one thing, Jaiku will now have access to scaling that Twitter could desperately use.

For background on Jaiku, I recommend this video interview by the new European outfit Intruders.tv with company founder Jyri Engestrom, trained as a sociologist and formerly from Nokia.

RedMonk analyst James Governor, who has blogged extensively about the business value of Jaiku competitor Twitter and whose Twitter feed I learned about the acquisition from, has some interesting thoughts on the news. Governor says he'd like to see RIM buy Twitter but thinks Yahoo! is much more likely. He says the Jaiku mobile download could be a key addition to the Google Phone kernel but fears that all the leading microblogging services will be quickly overrun with commercial messages. I think that's a valid concern and worry that ads could drown out the links I Twitter promoting my blog posts. (Joking.) All of Twitter is lit up with conversation on the acquisition, according the the tracking service Twitterverse, the hottest word across Twitter in the last hour is Jaiku. There's more good discussion there than I can post here.

With easy group creation, RSS import and threaded conversation, amongst other features, Jaiku is probably a superior service to Twitter. Twitter's API and large US community offers its own advantages for some users. Unfortunately, new accounts have been throttled at Jaiku with news of the announcement. That seems like a move that's a bit hostile to the early adopter types who are following this news now and a real lost opportunity.

Update: Here's the official Google statement about this exciting news.]]>Sponsor

Examples of Akibot in Use

To understand how Akibot works, imagine the following scenario: you post a message that reads "There will be a meeting next Wednesday morning at 1 PM regarding the new development project." In other enterprise Twitter clones like Yammer and Present.ly, only those others reading the stream of posts would see the message and would then be able to act on it, if need be. In Akibot, however, the system itself would understand the message and would create an appointment on the team calendar for you. It could even send you and your colleagues a reminder in the form of a text message or email when the meeting time drew near.

Another example goes like this: say a colleague posts a message stating "here is the latest Penske file http://xxxxxxxxx," - pointing to the resource hosted on the company's intranet. A week later, another user could ask "Does anyone know where the latest Penske file is?", and Akibot could then respond with a message pointing to the location previously posted.

Akibot can also function as a time-tracking tool. All you would have to do is post a message letting everyone know when you're beginning to work on a particular project and then post another when you're done.

The microblogging service could even update your CRM system with information about customers and your interactions with them. Again, all you'd have to do is post the information to Akibot.

How Does Akibot Work?

In order for Akibot to do what it does, it seeks out various keywords in a post, but not using simple search or in a "brute force" sort of way. Instead, it looks at the sentence structure as a whole to determine meaning. Akibot's main module is called the "preprocessor" which uses common elements of natural language processing (NLP) combined with two proprietary modules: a "contextual analyzer" and a "context>action" dictionary. The contextual analyzer take the results from the NLP module and finds the context using noun/pronoun/verb structures and then the "context>action" dictionary stores the relevant data and takes action on the item (e.g. it sends a reminder, updates your business software, etc.)

Because Akibot understands natural language - that is, the way people naturally speak - end users posting their messages don't have to use any special syntax in order for Akibot to understand them. However, if you do end up posting something Akibot doesn't understand, it will just ask you to explain and then learns from that explanation so it never has to ask again.

Even Simpler Than Twitter?

There are a few things that Akibot does differently than Twitter. For example, there is no "follow" functionality. By default, everyone follows everyone else, but can "opt-out" from following certain other users if they wish. Since Akibot is meant to be used within a single company, this makes sense. The system is also designed to be uncomplicated so there are no groups, no tabs, no browse functionality, and no search.

Like Twitter, though, Akibot supports private messages, but no special syntax is required here, either. To create one of these types of updates, a user simply clicks on "private" when posting.

Still in Private Beta

The company is still brand-new and there are no exact launch dates yet regarding when it will become publicly available. A lot will depend on the feedback provided by the initial crop of beta testers. Also, if Akibot was to receive funding (they have none now), development could proceed at a faster pace, notes Marcel.

At the moment, the company is considering offering Akibot for free for up to three users and then any additional users would cost $1/per user per month.

If your company wants to join the private beta, you can sign up to be considered on Akibot's homepage under the "Signup" option.

'Web 3.0,' however, seems to have peaked as a term to describe the next wave of Internet innovation before it even had a chance to happen.

For a the full list of Web 2.0 buzzwords, head over to the Royal Pingdom blog.

Conclusions?

We wouldn't want to draw too many conclusions from this list, as it is based on search terms, and as users get more familiar with these and start bookmarking their favorite sites, they will probably start using search less. Also, as these terms become household names, fewer users will look them up on Google.

In some ways then, we might be able to interpret the decline of searches for 'RSS' or 'cloud computing' as a positive thing, as users have replaced searches for these general terms with more specific queries.

Further embracing open standards, actions are published via the plugin using the Atom format and the Microformat hAtom, which Six Apart hopes will make it easier for people to move their activity streams around and use them however they like.

On some level, this development at Six Apart somewhat mirrors the direction that chief rival Automattic is taking with Wordpress: microblogging. A couple of days ago, Automattic introduced a new theme for Wordpress.com called Prologue, which adds Twitter-like functionality to Wordpress. Six Apart's plugin, meanwhile, basically allows users to create a tumblelog of content aggregated from the places they already post it (thoughts from Twitter, images from Flickr, etc.). Activity Streams and Tumblr are not perfectly analogous, the same way Prologue and Twitter are not, but they do all fit in the same category of tools.

To me these announcements points to a couple of key trends:

• A trend toward microblogging -- always on updates distilled to their most base form are becoming a more visible and important part of blogging.
• A trend toward open formats and data portability -- take your data with you and display it however and wherever you want.

So how long until Wordpress follows Six Apart's lead with Activity Streams? My guess is that the always strong Wordpress developer community won't take very long at all to kick something unofficial out. In fact, my friend Dan Grossman has been using a plugin he developed for his own Wordpress-powered blog to do more or less the same thing for months now (see it in action here). He hasn't released the source yet because others haven't expressed much interest to him. Perhaps that's about to change.

As more sites join DataPortability.org and we begin to hopefully see the fruits of their labor, things like distributed activity streams should become easier and more common.

Microblogging

With Motion's microblogging feature, blogs can create either a private or public microblog or both. A private microblog could be used for internal employee or team collaboration, for example, whereas a public microblog would let you share with your online community. Arising from the ashes of Pownce, the company acquired by Movable Type back in December, this feature has some resemblance to that service as it also includes richer microblogging features that the former Pownce competitor Twitter does. In fact, Motion's microblogging service is more like FriendFeed as it allows you to post links, images, audio, and video in addition to text.

Activity Streams

Also like FriendFeed, Motion includes an activity streams feature which they call "Action Streams." These streams are created by members collecting and sharing information from over 150 other sites supported by Six Apart's Action Streams service that launched in January 2009. The difference between Action Streams, which are implemented using a special blog plugin, and similar social networking services like FriendFeed or Plaxo is control. Site owners can selectively choose to show or hide individual actions in this decentralized framework. Also, Action Streams are published using Atom and the Microformat hAtom standard so they are not trapped in any one service.

Authentication Tools

Another aspect to Motion is its authentication tools which let users sign in with any existing account from Google, Yahoo, Facebook, AOL, or any OpenID provider. According to Movable Type, this opens up your community to over half a billion web users who can now comment or vote on your content without having to create a new account. However, members who wish to participate in the microblog as opposed to just the blog itself are still encouraged to register with the site. Movable Type believes this strikes a good balance between allowing for participation while also providing a compelling reason to register with an online community.

Profiles

Finally, Motion users are provided with online profiles which show their actions from around the web. Site members can follow each other and upload profile pictures just as they would on any other social network. As with the company's other blogging products like TypePad and Vox, members' profiles can also list their other accounts from around the web. These are imported by using Microformats to link to those sites.

Getting Started

If you're curious about what Motion looks like in action, you can check it out on BikeHugger (click on "Latest Activity" to see Action Streams) or visit the microblogging community on Real Estate Channel. You can also sign up for a demo for more information.

Current Movable Type Pro users can go here to download the plugin.

If you've become interested in the paradigm changing model of communication popularized by Twitter but have been frustrated by Twitter's frequent down time or other shortcomings - then Identi.ca could be for you.

Note that initial interest is already challenging the first implementation of this service, they are working on improving performance but it will work best once there are multiple interoperable installs!

Jabber Support

Many people love Twitter's messaging through GTalk, but the feature isn't always available. It's available immediately on Identi.ca.

OpenID

We created an account on Identi.ca using an OpenID account in under 60 seconds. It made us happy.

Right: I got my Failwhale shirt in the mail today from FailWhale.com

Coming "Soon"

Identi.ca just launched today but lists a number of features it says are coming "soon," including SMS, URL shortening, cross posting to Twitter and other services, a more AJAXy interface and much, much more. Exciting.

There is no "replies" tab on Identi.ca, but Twitter users will already be accustomed to that, right? We hope that functionality will come to Idneti.ca quickly.

Remote Subscription

Identi.ca uses a new technical spec in the works called OpenMicroblogging, something that would let users of one supporting subscription to send and receive messages securely across different microblogging services. This sounds like a great idea, and uses the OAuth user authentication protocol we like so much, but it doesn't appear to be usable at launch.

Federation

Ultimately, this means federation. I put a customized version of the foundation software (called Laconi.ca) on my server, you put one to your liking on yours, we both get friends on our local copy and any other versions around the web - and everyone can communicate with each other just like we were using the same service from the same provider. Whoever comes up with the best alternative to the garbled name Identi.ca wins!

That's something that many people have wanted to do for a long time.

Can it work, work it scale? At least it's open source so the development community doesn't have to play armchair quarterback for a black box like they are with Twitter. Maybe these little puppies can get tied into Gnip, the social media switchboard service we wrote about yesterday. Especially once Twitter integration happens, we expect to see Identi.ca become an important part of our work day here at RWW.

Now if you'll excuse use, we need to go make a desktop app for Identi.ca using Fluid.