"In essence, instead of one entity having control over a medium like Twitter, a standard is made, allowing any person or company to implement the medium, which remains interoperable."
Today at Viddler HQ, around the new handmade, reclaimed pine Viddler table, the lot of us were discussing App.net, Tent.io, Twitter and the state of social networking. It really is an interesting time.
Today I said, if Tent.io existed in 2003 I wonder if Twitter would exist in its current form. In reality, micro-blogging is coming back around to be little more than blogging with a few added social features. Tent.io standardizes this "protocol" like SMTP and POP did for email.
For an excellent and thorough discussion of this look no further than John Siracusa’s Hypercritical Episode 88. You might consider Huffduffing it like I did.
I’m not going to bet for or against App.net winning or losing against something like Tent.io. I actually happen to like App.net quite a bit. And, App.net could easily implement the standard. I’m also not betting for or against Tent.io. But something will come along to disrupt the control that Twitter and Facebook have over the social graph.
Exciting.
