Following the linux model. They install micro-blogging on companies intranets and then do service for them. Not a bad idea, won't be the next google, but it is a niche market that seems ripe for the taking. A lot of companies want to use twitter like services, but are not comfortable going online.

And a bit resembles also with the search engine situation: Google is the leader but that doesn't stop entrepreneurs to build niche search engines or even take on Google directly.

Twitter is the leader, no doubt. But a Twitter clone could have a specific niche (Yammer, for example, is much more oriented to enterprise "twittering").

Laconica just offers you, free, the mean to build such a niche service without being necessary to hire developers. Like there are lots of social networking software...or video sharing software (Youtube clones).

As for Twitter capturing the microblogging market, with ~6 million users I doubt this is the case. Either what we've seen so far is the tip of the iceberg, or there is very little real demand for microblogging. Twitter seems to be very focused on a certain market and certain set of features, so there's definitely room for other players.

A while back, I reasoned on Twitter vs identi.ca. -- Here's the bit on roaming micro-blogging services: http://is.gd/sJtL

Given that it makes a certain amount of sense to start working on an open source protocol now so that it's mature when/if Twitter competition starts to spring up.

And there is a company selling that?

And there are companies buying that?

I'm not sure if I want to laugh or cry right now.

So, give it some time...the enterprise will catch up eventually with Twitter like stuff. Too bad that, at that time, something new will be out there...and they have to play the cat and mouse again.

I'm baffled that someone would even want to deploy a twitter-like app in a corporate environment. Twitter seems to be the most counter-productive form of communication imaginable, even when you get rid of the character limit.

IM is always-on, and at my clients it seems to work. But broadcasting over IM doesn't work.

Email broadcasts piss off enterprise people (not least because psychotic IT managers crack down on email storage, which leads to a startup idea that could easily generate an 8-figure ROI for most large enterprises: kill those IT managers).

What does that leave you with?

I'm actually bullish on enterprise microblogging.

It's the broadcast bit about twitter that worries me. Broadcast equals noise. Communication noise is very harmful.

If you really value real-time updates about your peers then that should at least be limited to the stuff that can be relevant to you, e.g. to people that work on the same project as you.

For this purpose a simple chat-room seems more than adequate. And that is supported by pretty much every IM service in existence. Without character limits. With seamless unicast.

Absolutely not. In twitter you follow people, which makes absolutely no sense in corporate context. Who am I supposed to follow, my project manager, all my co-workers? Am I supposed to change my followership for each project? What when I'm jumping between projects?

As I see it the only meaningful messaging context in the corporate world is per-project or per-team. And nothing easier than starting a chatroom, campfire or similar for that. Or why exactly should Bob the programmer care what Sarah from accounting is working on if she's not part of his project or team?

Which is completely nonsensical. Why put that burden on the user when a simple chatroom serves the exact same purpose, with better scoping? Why would I want my CEOs messages intermixed with my project related chatter? Why should I receive messages for projects that I have nothing to do with only because one of my co-workers is involved with them?

You'll probably say "then filter by hashtag". And I'll tell you: This is why many people consider twitter nothing more than a very poor re-implementation of existing chat technology. The hashtag emulates a chatroom (poorly) on top of a broadcast protocol. In fact the whole construct is so primitive and backwards than one has to wonder whether the twitter guys had ever looked at IRC, jabber or, well, anything, before they started their broken impl.

What they did successfully was to make person-centric scopes (rooms) the default. This obviously has a lot of mass appeal due to the inherent psychological effects (cf. "why babies cry"). But again, I don't see how this has a place in any productive environment.

Interesting level of abuse then. Those hash-tags seem to be mighty popular, probably only topped by "replies".

There is a difference between a status update (which people already organize their days around in big companies) and a chat message.

And what would that be? Twitter presents your "status updates" in exactly the same way that chat clients present their chat messages. Okay it's crippled as in you are not supposed to reply - but people are obviously not using it that way.

Furthermore you ignore the fact that nobody in your company has only a single, canonical status that could be summed up in 140 chars. Everybody is involved in multiple projects and teams, each of which has a different status.

There is a reason why all ticket- and project-management systems are project centric and not people centric. It's because the former makes sense and the latter doesn't.

Please. Most of IRC is idlers. It's simple enough to setup an IRC client to be connected to channels that are useful to you.

Twitter is a single dimensional thing. You can only follow people and be followed. With chatrooms you can have several groups open at the same time. I'd say that makes it far more useful, especially in a corporate setting.

With Twitter you just don't have the granularity. You have to either say you're interested in Bob, or you're not interested in Bob. With IRC/chatrooms/etc, you say you're interested in Bob IF he's also talking about some project you've setup a channel for.

I'd say the only real reason for a corporation to use Twitter in their intranet is if they want to appear hip+cool and "get it".

It's simple for people who are used to "idling" on chat channels, periodically checking back to see whether anything interesting has happened. But not only is that an uncommon use case for most corporate computer users, it's annoying even for people who are used to it. To wit: much as I like Campfire, I have to be reminded or scheduled to get on it.

Most people don't spend their days lurking. Almost everyone on the Internet does spend their days available on IM.

You're not acknowledging the Twitter use case. Twitter isn't a chat system, even if people abuse it that way.

It's simple enough to add bots to a channel to email/sms people of updates. Chatrooms just do everything twitter does, and a ton more.

Skype. It's proprietary, but I don't know of a free alternative.

Zephyr.

But, no proprietary or internal only communications please, since its on offsite servers.

WTF?