As Twitter is trying to work its way through its problem the almost palpable anticipation of so called Twitter killers can be felt within the halls of social media. The newest one to be ordained with this power has been identi.ca which was announced via FriendFeed the other night. While everyone is getting all orgasmic over this new darling because it is open source and all that silly goodness there was another Twitter clone that seems to have snuck past the alpha early adopter crowd.
Last last night I saw someone mention a service called Kwippy that they said was another Twitter clone that showed some early promise. As I commented on that item in FriendFeed - “at least they got the verb idea for a service”. While it seemed at that point to not have garnered much attention I decided to go and have a look at Kwippy for myself to see if it did indeed hold any promise.
Like you can see from the screen capture of the service the Twitter similarities are there from the get go. After getting my beta invite I set about doing all the confirmation type stuff (which never worked for in identi.ca from what I could tell) and checking out the available settings for my account. Now the first warning I can give anyone wanting to try out the service is to make sure that you turn off the Reply Notification or you will find your email inbox literally flooded. The good thing is that Kwippy has made those notification options available from the very beginning – again unlike identi.ca apparently from what I have read anyway.
A couple of interesting things about Kwippy that does set it apart from Twitter right off the bat is that there is no character count limit. As well when someone posts a reply or comment on one of your kwips it will show up as an item count added to the Comment count under each kwip. When you click on that Comment link you will be displayed to all the replies to the original kwip. You can also ad your own new replies here as well so in effect each kwip becomes a self contained unit.
The one thing – well actually two – that I feel that they need to do and which are both common bug-a-boo’s of mine is the addition of an AJAX refresh of the page and they also really need to fix that page background color in their CSS file for folks using IE7.
Now I am not going to even use the kill Twitter phrase here because that is just plain stupid but whether or not Kwippy could be a Twitter alternative is another question altogether. As it seems to be entering a increasingly crowded field – if Louis Gray’s comment on FriendFeed is any indication – Kwippy probably stands as good a chance as any other Twitter clone. It will all depend on if they can rapidly deliver some features that will help it stand apart from the crowd and if unlike identi.ca it can stand up to even a moderate amount of attention from the early adopter crowd.
While most of the early adopters will be fawning over identi.ca I’ll probably be hanging out at Kwippy [nw] if only because making kwips is easier to say than making identies.
Loading ...
Add New Comment
Viewing 5 Comments
Thanks. Your comment is awaiting approval by a moderator.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Do you already have an account? Log in and claim this comment.
Add New Comment
Trackbacks