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Open Twittering

Posted on 16 Jun 2009 at 00:00

Ian Wrigley demonstrates how a twitter clone, laconica, can provide a sensible way to keep all the members of a development team in the loop.

You can also configure Laconica to send messages to and from a Jabber server, which means it can tie in with your Instant Messenger client; a neat benefit if you're already using IM for team communication. And that's why I started writing about Laconica in the first place, because I'm becoming convinced that something like this is a great way for a team to keep each other updated about what they're doing, without it taking up a huge amount of time.

I know that Simon uses instant messaging in our London office to let all our developers communicate with each other, but it's never quite felt as compelling to me up until now. Laconica, however, is a different matter entirely: developers can pop a quick message about what they're working on, or throw out a query, and immediately get back to their work - and because there's a limit of 140 characters, that forces them to be concise, and not to spend ages crafting long-winded excuses for why they haven't actually done what they said they would do.

Sure, if someone has a complex question or a complex answer to a question they can still use IM, email or even, heaven forbid, talk to each other, but for a brief update of their status this can't be beaten. Indeed, there are now at least a couple of companies offering "corporate" versions of Twitter, but since Laconica's so easy to set up it's hard to see why you'd want to pay for a commercial service rather than do it yourself.