This weekend, Colin Walker and I were able to have a conversation using our respective microblogging tools (MyStatusTool and MST-PHP). It was a cool and fun experience. I felt like we were taking the first steps to explore how to use these tools.
I sent email to a number of friends when I announced MyStatusTool, and one of them replied that he did not know what problem this was trying to solve. I thought about it and today realized what is it – a bootstrap to develop something new. Dave Winer has been referring to bootstraps throughout his blogging career (this essay is an excellent summary, and it is over 20 years old). The concept of MyStatusTool is a specific type of bootstrap:
My Status Tool is an application that provides the basic posting and reading functionality within Twitter, but using RSS and rssCloud as the enabling technologies.
from https://github.com/andysylvester/myStatusToolDemo
So, really, this is a bootstrap of a new type of Twitter. Dave Winer had a post about this in 2010:
Anyway, to answer the question posed by this piece — you bootstrap the federated 140-character loosely coupled network the same way you bootstrap anything. Let’s start with something very very simple, like two tin cans separated with a string. Something that is useful, perhaps minimally so, and can be federated. Then we use it. Then we think. Then we improve it. Start with working code. Start tomorrow, not next month.
from http://scripting.com/stories/2010/08/10/howToBootstrapFederated140.html
I will have more to say about this in the coming days – let me know if you want to be a part of this bootstrap!
Basing it upon RSS makes sense, as it’s already designed to easily distribute communications among subscribers. It seems like Dave would have already done it.
Ron, I saw your comment, I think that Dave Winer has made several attempts since defining and implementing rssCloud to gain interest in the protocol. To me, there needs to be more tools that incorporate the use of rssCloud. On the blogging side, Colin and I have shown that it does not take much to create feeds supporting rssCloud, and it does not take much to listen for notification of updates. I am planning to create a series of posts to show how to add rssCloud support in feeds. On the flip side, I don’t know how to encourage feed reader tools to support rssCloud, but maybe if there is more supply, users will look for that prototcol to be supported in feed readers. Anyway, I am planning on having some fun!
On December 3, Dave Winer published a “call to develop” for a feed-based social media app (he mentioned Mastodon in his post, but could be…