Run and Jump Onto the Latest Microblogging Serivce: Identi.ca
Last night I spent a couple hours on a new micro-blogging service after it spread throughout the early adopter community. My conclusion? It’s still limited to early adopters and is kind of slow. Also, as with all other newly launched micro-blogging services, the primary conversation on Identi.ca is …… Identi.ca! Yes, on every other microblogging service that I use, the conversation is usually about the platform.
One good thing about this new service is that I don’t get an email every time somebody ends up following me. On Plurk and Twitter, I get emails every day notifying me of new followers and it quickly fills up my inbox. As MG Siegler points out, there is one other problem with Identi.ca: everybody is still on Twitter. Come rain, come shine, Twitter is always available to at least complain about.
MySpace is infamous for their enormous down time early on. One of the other drivers of the early adopters to go run to another platform is the hope that we will end up one of the top 100 users on a site as the top 100 users on Twitter clearly have a substantial amount of power. As Stan Schroder wrote back in May, being an early adopter is important to attracting thousands of followers. It also takes a lot of work.
Just take a look at Robert Scoble who spends countless hours on FriendFeed every day. It helps him stay connected and eventually it also helps build one of the larger networks on a site. Whether you are quick to adopt the new shiny services on the web, one thing appears certain for the time being: users simply aren’t going to jump off the Twitter bandwagon anytime soon.
