Identi.ca

Identi.ca
License	Apache Licence 2.0
Website	identi.ca

identi.ca
Type of site	Microblogging and Social network service
Available in	currently English; many others before the switch to pump.io
Owner	E14N.com
Created by	Evan Prodromou
URL	identi.ca
Commercial	Yes
Registration	Required to post. New accounts are not created any more; use of own or others' pump.io servers is recommended.
Launched	July 2, 2008; 16 years ago
Content license	Creative Commons Attribution 3.0

identi.ca was a free and open-source social networking and blogging service based on the pump.io software, using the Activity Streams protocol. Identi.ca stopped accepting new registrations in 2013, but continues to operate alongside several other pump.io-based hosts provided by E14N which continue to accept new registrations.^[1]

Features

Identi.ca running on pump.io is similar to social networking sites like Facebook and Google+, allowing unlimited length status updates, rich text, and images. The Activity Streams protocol supports many kinds of activities such as games. OpenFarmGame is a prototype application for an Activity Streams-based game. Hashtags, groups, and global search are not supported.

History

StatusNet

The service received more than 8,000 registrations and 19,000 updates within the first 24 hours of publicly launching on July 2, 2008,^[2] and reached its 1,000,000th notice on November 4, 2008.^[3]^[4] In January 2009, identi.ca received investment funds from venture capital group Montreal Start Up.^[5]

On March 30, 2009, Control Yourself (since renamed StatusNet Inc) announced that Identi.ca was to become part of a hosted microblogging service called status.net to be launched in May 2009. Status.net offers individual microblogs under a subdomain to be chosen by the customer. Identi.ca will remain a free service. All notices will be published under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 license by default, but paying customers will be free to choose a different license.^[6]

Formerly based on StatusNet, a micro-blogging software package built on the OStatus specification (and earlier based on the OpenMicroBlogging specification), Identi.ca allowed users to send text updates (known as "notices") up to 140 characters long. While similar to Twitter in both concept and operation, Identi.ca/StatusNet provided many features not currently implemented by Twitter, including XMPP support and personal tag clouds. In addition, Identi.ca/StatusNet allowed free export and exchange of personal and "friend" data based on the FOAF standard; therefore, notices could be fed into a Twitter account or other service, and also ported in to a private system similar to Yammer.

pump.io

Developer Evan Prodromou chose to change the site to the pump.io software platform in development, because pump.io offers more features making it technically more advanced.^[7]^[8] Registration on Identi.ca was closed in December 2012 in preparation for the switch to pump.io software (the popularity of Identi.ca and "official" Status.net hosting were considered a hindrance to the creation of a federated social network).^[7] The conversion was completed on 12 July 2013.

The 140 character per post limit was removed (in StatusNet, it was a setting, not an inherent limitation); now the blog posts can contain formatting and images. Groups,^[9] hashtags,^[10] and page listing popular posts^[11] are not yet implemented in pump.io.^[12]

Footnotes

^ Evan Prodromou (26 Mar 2013). "No more new registrations on identi.ca". Archived from the original on December 29, 2014. Retrieved 2 Jan 2015.
^ "identi.ca". identi.ca. Archived from the original on July 8, 2008. Retrieved 2008-07-03.
^ identi.ca Archived 2008-11-06 at the Wayback Machine
^ Evan Prodromou (3 Jul 2012). "FOUR MORE YEARS". status.net. Archived from the original on 2013-09-03. Retrieved 8 Aug 2013.
^ Croll, Alastair (15 January 2009). "Identi.ca Gets Funding to Make Open-source Twitter Variant". GigaOM. Archived from the original on 25 February 2019. Retrieved 17 August 2012.
^ "status.net coming soon". controlyourself.ca. March 30, 2009. Archived from the original on April 1, 2009.
^ ^a ^b Nathan Willis (March 27, 2013). "StatusNet, Identi.ca, and transitioning to pump.io". LWN.net. Retrieved 2013-05-07.
^ Bryan Behrenshausen (July 15, 2013). "pump.io: the decentralized social network that's really fun". opensource.com. Retrieved 2013-07-15.
^ "Groups". GitHub. Retrieved 2013-09-25.
^ "Automatically link hash tags". GitHub. Retrieved 2013-09-25.
^ "Popular". GitHub. Retrieved 2013-09-25.
^ "pump.io: the decentralized social network that's really fun | Opensource.com". opensource.com.

References

Rosenberg, Dave (July 3, 2008). "Identi.ca--open-source Twitter?". CNET news. Archived from the original on 2013-09-14. Retrieved 2008-07-03.
Hopkins, Mark (July 2, 2008). "identi.ca: The Force is Strong with This One (But is no Jedi, Yet)". Mashable. Retrieved 2008-07-03.
Terdiman, Daniel (October 6, 2008). "Taking on Twitter with open-source software". CNET news. Archived from the original on 2012-08-26. Retrieved 2008-10-06.