Yesterday Dave Winer pointed to a post from Dare Obasanjo; who works at Microsoft, that he suggests alludes to the idea that Microsoft might be thinking about entering the Twitter universe with their version of the service. The line Dave refers to is a postscript at the end of Dare’s post about the Yahoo layoffs that has sent many looking for new jobs.

PS: To any ex-Yahoo’s out there, if the kind of problems described in this post sound interesting to you, we’re always hiring. Give me a holler.

In that postscript Dare links back to a post on the AssetBar blog where there was a post talking about creating a decentralized version of Twitter. It is this linkage that prompted Dave’s restating how he thinks the idea still has merit.

It might be the right idea; but even that is questionable, but the idea that Microsoft might be considering a Twitter clone is not something that I think they should be thinking of. Besides the fact I doubt very much that it would have the uptake that Twitter has seen I doubt very much that it would even be well received.

What I do think would be well received is if Microsoft stepped up to the plate and offered to collaborate with Twitter in an open source open community type endeavor. Aside from the massive PR and goodwill it could create for Microsoft the skill set and shear size of developer community that would then flock to the whole Twitter universe would be massive.

This is one time when Microsoft has a maybe once in a lifetime chance to show that it does get the open community concept and that it sees helping can produce better results for the entire internet community over either buying or creating a competitor. So Dare rather than hiring folks to work on a competitor why not work to getting Microsoft to form a partnership with Twitter. Wouldn’t that be a better all round idea for all involved especially us the users of the service.

Conversation Tags: Twitter, Microsoft