Identi.ca, Twitter, and a failed blog idea.

After years of holding out, I am now using Twitter.  For people who know me, this will probably come as a small to medium sized shock, since I have been known to be adamantly against the pointless updates that seemed to permeate Twitter (just had a sandwich, etc).  I caved after attempting to create a more substantial blog (slashthought.blogspot.com), and found that getting folks involved was a lot more difficult that I expected.  People seem to just not have time for a "full-flavor" blog.  That said, I still want to keep in touch with people who are in far away lands (like NY and Philly), and laugh when they post funny stuff.  So here I am.  My name's Matt and I have a Twitter account.

After deciding this, I searched for an open alternative to Twitter, and found the StatusNet project, which is a federated microblogging platform, allowing you to own, move, and host your own updates.  I love the idea of that, and settled on identi.ca as the site I would use for this.  Identi.ca offers Twitter integration, but it isn't complete (or what I expected).  You can push updates to Twitter, where all of my friends are, but you can't see the twitter stream.  Problem.

After exploring the mass of apps for Twitter and other social networks (Seesmic, Tweetdeck, ping.fm), I believe I have finally found a way to do what I am looking to do: see my Twitter friends, but also post all updates to identi.ca (on the off chance that it gains support) AND Twitter.  Here's the solution (if you're using an Android phone):

• Download Twidroyd on the Android Market.
• Set up your Twitter account as the default account on Twidroyd.
• Sign up for an identi.ca account (if you don't have one).
• Set up your identi.ca account to push updates to Twitter.
• Add your identi.ca account to Twidroyd as well.
• When you Tweet, use your identi.ca identity in Twidroyd (available as a dropdown), which will push all updates to Twitter (yes, even @ replies).

This doesn't help you on the desktop, just your mobile.  For the desktop, I found that Seesmic web is best.  There's nothing to download, and it works with Ping.Fm (most don't), which allows simultaneous updates to both Twitter and Identi.ca.  Hacky hacky hacky, I know.

So there you go.  If you're looking to microblog, and would like to support the open alternative as well as the closed, but much more popular one, that's how I managed to do it.  I would encourage anyone reading this who does not have an identi.ca account to create one, its free, easy, links to Twitter, and is federated, so there aren't any fail whales or ownership concerns.  It's the way it should be.  So if you're looking to follow me, I would much prefer you use identi.ca, but either way, you can find me @graymattr.