Gordian Knot in my head: XMPP, RSS, Microblogging & Social Streams

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Wednesday, August 27. 2008

Gordian Knot in my head: XMPP, RSS, Microblogging & Social Streams

I just installed a Jabber server on one of my servers and played with a php class for XMPP to interact with it. The goal is to have some kind of tool to "speak" with a NoseRub server. Features like Twitter's track for keywords come to my mind, but also for setting your location or various other things to come.

Then, I'm also thinking about how to integrate Identi.ca with NoseRub. There is some kind of protocol available and I hear XMPP a lot when talking about server-to-server communication and so I start thinking: is XMPP just a better/faster RSS? Should I route every single Social Stream of Identoo.com-Users through this new Jabber server and thus allow everyone to subscribe to it by adding it as friend?

Isn't the Social Stream itself a micro blog? There are so many people pushing their blog updates and new photos from Flickr or elsewhere to their Twitter stream, that it almost is a Social Stream. So, when I add a Twitter user right now as contat on Identoo.com (this works perfectly), I am halfway there, when it comes to a decentralised Twitter. I could support Identi.ca right now, too. The only thing that is missing, are the notifications when someone added my as a contact. And of course, that I cannot add any RSS-Feed to Twitter.com or Identi.ca as a contact.

And this is the Goridan Knot: it is all weaved together, but I think it is very simple to solve. I just didn't find the right sword to do it. Maybe allowing any URL as an endpoint is good enough + being able to autodiscover a XMPP stream instead of a RSS feed.

Still searching for the sword...

Posted by Dirk Olbertz at 23:32 | Comments (6) | Trackbacks (0)

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Do you want to change the whole focus of noserub (xmpp instead of rss and microblogging instead of lifestreaming) or do you want to add xmpp as a new/optional feature?

#1 Pfefferle (Homepage) on 2008-08-28 10:00 (Reply)

I don't think I would change it completely. RSS is far to common to drop it right now...

But I see Microblogging and Lifestreaming as similar concepts. What probably will change with NoseRub is, that it will not only aggregate data, but also create it. But as open as possible, so just integrating something like identi.ca in the NoseRub package would be the ideal solution: letting the user create data for a decentralised social network.

NoseRub's focus isn't on Lifestreaming, it's on distributed social networks. But right now, there are only few distributed protocols available which could be used within NoseRub. The open microblogging protocol woul be one of them.

Do you have any other idea on how to use XMPP?

#1.1 Dirk Olbertz (Homepage) on 2008-08-28 10:05 (Reply)

You see microblogging and lifestreaming as similar concepts and you mentioned that people pushing their blog updates and new photos from Flickr or elsewhere to their Twitter stream, that it almost is a Social Stream... I agree with that, but all that twitter-publishing-stuff works with a third-service (rss to twitter for example) or uses the proprietary api of twitter directly. Thats why i think combining rss and a microblogging-service is an awesome idea.

I don't have any other ideas on how to use xmpp, but there are several pushing alternatives to rss, like GNIP (http://gnipcentral.com/) or perhaps a new protocol developed by friendfeed.

#2 Pfefferle (Homepage) on 2008-08-28 10:26 (Reply)

What I dont like about GNIP is, that it is one central server - from what I currently see. Don't know if they plan on having a distributed network.

I heard about FriendFeed's plans, but right now there is nothing real available. Let's wait and see...

#2.1 Dirk Olbertz (Homepage) on 2008-08-28 10:30 (Reply)

Oh the blog killed my second link: http://www.neunetz.com/2008/08/28/friendfeed-arbeitet-an-effizienterem-protokoll-fuer-siteuebergreifenden-austausch-von-updates/

#3 Pfefferle (Homepage) on 2008-08-28 10:27 (Reply)

Since XMPP is mostly used in a more real-time environment I'd to think of it as some sort of place for collaborative work.
For example one could publish a discussion from an IM-Session or even a voce/video-chat which could easily become something like a collaborative podcast including screened materials.

On the other hand XMPP might be an comfortable interface, especially for microblogging - One could just set a IM-Status which gets automatically posted to Identi.ca (or the other way around), receive answers to the posting on your xmpp client and stop receiving them on status message change..

The collaborative aspects leads to other questions on how such multi-author content should be published..
If there was something like "bonds" between two lifestreams glued together on one point through a collaborative work such could be used to link to inspirational or orginal content for new creations, too and emphasize the remix aspect of cultural creations.

#4 renilgh on 2008-09-17 17:02 (Reply)

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