I try not to dive into mean posts, but I read only particular post today that made me cringe. It highlights the overhyped Laconica as the best thing in technology since sliced bread. I'm not linking to the page, because it really doesn't deserve any attention. I have, however, quoted the relevant portions below.

Because I know the readers of this site actually have a life, I'll explain Laconica in a couple words: shitty PHP self-hosted Twitter clone (with a big emphasis on shitty). Yes, I've looked at the source.

So here we begin:

Identi.ca, the open source and Federated microblogging platform, could very well put Twitter out of business as other businesses begin realizing how they can adopt it.

Let the hyperboles begin.

I realized this today when Jay Ridgeway was able to show how to set up a simple Federated instance of Laconi.ca in just 7 steps.

"Just" 7 steps. As opposed to, say, just 20 steps.

Today I began imagining how others could begin utilizing this technology - essentially it is a technology built to allow other similar systems built on the same technology to talk with each other.

Wait, technologies that talk to each other using the same protocol?! That sounds dangerous and mystical. There can't already be previous examples of this ... wait, how am I on the intarwebz?

Evan Prodromou, the founder of Identi.ca, is not just building another microblogging service. He's developing a standard, along with software that adopts that standard so that you, too can build software that communicates with that standard! This is profound, and in my opinion we haven't seen such innovation and selfless development of new communication techniques since the invention of the web itself. Identi.ca is in many ways building an entirely new, open layer of the internet.

Holy crap. Viva la revolucion! Somebody call Algore. Some guy wrote a PHP script where your data can appear in other people's friends lists! It's a shame nobody's done this already... oh wait. Brad did it with LiveJournal years ago (you can subscribe to any RSS feed through your LJ "friends" list).

However, there is no way currently for me to associate only with those of like tastes and culture. For instance, if I am into college football and you are not, you aren't going to be interested in the details of the games I'm watching. You may be interested though to know I have an interest in college football.

If only could create a website where you could associate with other people with similar interests... I would call such a site "LiveJournal" ... or perhaps ... "Facebook." Maybe the "MySpace" trademark isn't taken. I think this is a good idea. I should go get some VC money.

Now, what if ESPN were to launch a version of Laconi.ca just for sports lovers? It would just take a simple install of Laconi.ca and a little cobranding of their logo, look, and feel and soon an entire community of sports lovers would be sharing their love for sports, communicating back and forth, and showing their other sports-loving friends what they're doing in their sports-loving life.

Yeah, installing a piece of app that's poorly engineered with horrible usability is really going to supplant the millions of dollars ESPN has invested in commenting, forums, live chats ... forreals.

Twitter seems to be completely ignoring this as they shut the doors on developers, try to develop entirely in-house, and build an entirely proprietary system.

Right, cause a self-hosted PHP script on Dreamhost is really going to be doing well once you have hundreds of other scripts calling home to see if you have updated about your peanut butter and jelly sandwich lunch. Engineering and scaling is easy! Anybody can do it!

Unless Twitter adopts and opens up in a major way, they will fail.

Yes, says the guy who breathlessly claims he's an Apple fanboy (which, we all know, is a dying company because it's closed off ... oh wait.... no... it's doing quite well by closing off their systems).