The Case for a Status Update Standard

LinkedIn and Twitter announced a status update syncing arrangement yesterday. From LinkedIn...

"The idea is simple: When you set your status on LinkedIn you can now tweet it as well, amplifying it to your followers and real-time search services like Twitter Search and Bing. And when you tweet, you can send that message to your LinkedIn connections as well, from any Twitter service or tool."

We're seeing a movement toward status syncing, There's this partnership but also the emergence of tools like Tumblr, Ping.fm and Posterous, which can also accomplish the same across multiple services. 

So, why doesn't Twitter and others team to submit the status update to a standards body? This will ensure that we don't see a repeat of what occurred with incompatible instant messaging services. If there's one protocol that everyone can adopt and build off of, it will make the real-time web faster, easier and more innovative. Let's hope this is a first such step.

Comments

[Paul Watson]

Doesn't Twitter want to be the pulse of the planet and therefore own and control the flow of status updates and so wouldn't be too keen to standardise it and cede control to many competitors? Same reason they aren't going to support PubSubHubbub or rssCloud.

[Joy-Mari Cloete]

Twitter and LinkedIn couldn't be more different if they tried. Not so sure whether I'd want my LinkedIn contacts to know I'm doing a silly quiz.

[Markus Heurung]

The first step could be the OpenMicroblogging Standard (OMB) http://openmicroblogging.org/Building something on top of this open standard could solve this "problem".

[Aaron Hockley]

As Markus noted, there's already an OpenMicroblogging Standard. I know it wouldn't be like Twitter to embrace anything that makes sense, but it would really be the right thing.

[Charles Baldwin]

By way of examples, Twitter and Identi.ca both provide RSS and Atom feeds for every account's timeline. Why not leverage the work done on those standards?

[Marshall Kirkpatrick]

http://ActivityStrea.ms is another option, but as Paul said in first comment - I'm afraid it's looking like "open" Twitter is the new closed. Here's my negative coverage of the LinkedIn/Twitter deal, in case of interest http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/twitter_linkedin_messaging.php Great to find out another voice is advocating standards in all this Steve!

[Roger Harris]

This would be part of what I have dubbed a "PIMS" -- Personal Information Management System. As the number of apps increases for both aggregation and dissemination of online messaging, a PIMS will be an essential tool in our productivity software. http://www.twitterthoughts.com/social-media-news-analyses/category/personal-information-management-systems