Distributed Twitter

[andrewducker]

Can anyone see a way that a distributed Twitter could work?

Obviously you could use RSS to aggregate tweeters you like into one place - but that only covers very basic functionality.  For instance, I can't see a way to both decentralise it _and_ allow for hashtag filtering over the whole database to find the tweets you like.

Any thoughts?

Comments

[andlosers.livejournal.com]

Have you seen Identi.ca and Laconi.ca?

Also see OpenMicroBlogging.

[drplokta]

It's a tricky one, because the data's not much larger than the metadata, so there's not much point in maintaining complete copies of the metadata at each site while sharding the data.

In theory, your searches could start on one server and then traverse a tree of other known servers, and the server where your search begins could consolidate the results and hand them to you, but it would make searching a bit slow and unreliable. It would also make them generate a lot of network traffic.

Alternatively, each post could go to multiple sites -- one for the user, one for each other user mentioned with an @user, and one for each hashtag used. Then it would be possible to search by user, @user or hashtag because you'd know which server to send the search to.

[nameandnature]

It's Usenet: flood fill between servers, hashtags are groups and "all tweets from Fred" is a group, so hashtagged posts from Fred are crossposts to Fred's group and the hashtag group.

This isn't completely distributed as there are still servers and clients.

[call-waiting.livejournal.com]

Sounds like you need a Distributed Hashtag Table.

Just kidding. Not really.</dodgeball>

[matgb]

Hashtags were created independently of Twitter and initially you had to go to places like hashtags.com to search for them anyway.

I already have a live bookmark with an RSS of incoming link referrals and mentions of my name that comes from blog pinging servers.

All you need is a microblogging ping server and a decent search setup for complete aggregation—search for @andrewducker or whatever and it'll show all entries on all sources that are pinging your engine of choice.

Automattic already run a free pinging service for blogs (that I keep meaning to link to), a similar service would mean your host has to ping one repository, it pings all the search setups, etc.

Easy.

Completely beyond my technical skills, but the technology is already there.