Taking on Twitter with Open Source

Cnet has an interview with Montreal-based Evan Prodromou, developer of Identica, an open-source microblogging alternative to Twitter, and the OpenMicroBlogging protocol. The interview touches on Evan's business model.

From the introduction:

"Earlier this summer, just as Twitter started to really pick up steam, the microblogging service began to have major stability problems.

The more users who signed up, the more the site seemed to be down, and it became nearly as commonplace to see the so-called "fail whale"--signifying that a desired operation wouldn't go through--as it was to have the service work properly.

For countless users, this was extremely frustrating, as Twitter had become the live conversation medium of choice for many early-adopters. And into this vacuum jumped a series of other microblogging services, each trying to pick up where Twitter seemed to be leaving off and hoping that large numbers of users would migrate to these new choices."