Posts from April 2009

On Wednesday 11 January 1989, I went to Loftus Road to see Manchester United play QPR in an FA Cup 3rd round replay.

As usual, we went for a pint in our favourite pub, The Greyhound (or similar), on Shepherd's Bush Green before finally spurning one last beer and reluctantly making our way to the ground. Loftus Road was packed. The United section behind the goal was full. Stewards opened up another section along up to the half-way line to accommodate the large away support.

When we eventually got past the turnstiles, we surged forward onto the small terrace, singing and chanting, looking forward to an exciting FA Cup-tie under floodlights.

Shortly before kick-off, more United fans were admitted into our section and there was another surge forward as they tried to get a decent view, I'm a big guy (6'2") and I was (literally) lifted off my feet until everyone found their place and settled down.

When Tony Gill and then Deiniol Graham scored for United, there was manic celebrations from all the United fans. Once again, I was lifted off my feet but I didn't care - United had scored !

In the ensuing melee and chaos, a couple of people, including a young lady, lost their footing and fell onto the concrete terrace. When the celebrations subsided, these people were simply lifted back to their feet to continue their vocal support for United as they pressed for a winner.

Three months later, I watched TV pictures of an tragedy unfolding at a FA Cup semi-final held at Hillsborough where 96 football fans who, like me, had travelled to a football match, excited, apprehensive, nervous, to support their team.

Although I was saddened by the news from Hillsborough, I recall I was rather blase about the tragedy. After all, I didn't support Liverpool and I suspect we all probably went out for a few pints that night as Match of The Day was curtailed.

On Monday, I found myself alone in the house and read a copy of The Independent and was confronted by stark, black and white images of young people pinned to those metal fences in pens 2 and 3 in Leppings Lane, gasping for breath, lifted off their feet, unable to stand, unable to move, unable to breathe.

Innocent, young, passionate, football fans, just like me at Loftus Road, supporting their team.

Dying. In front of me.

I stared again at the pictures, I read the stories about the mothers, the sons, the daughters, the fathers. Then, suddenly and spontaneously, I just broke down and cried like a baby.

That's why, for all Manchester United's rivalry with Liverpool and for all the jokes and for all the banter, I have never sung a 'Hillsborough' chant in my life.

May the 96 victims of Hillsborough rest in peace.

Its fair to say it took me a while to fully get microblogging. In fact, initially Twitter left me as cold as a corpse in a deep freeze.

Inevitably, things change and like an old woman, I reserve the right to change my mind more frequently than my underpants, and in 2008, I started using Twitter to post a continuous bytestream of inane drivel in less than 140 characters.

Last July, when identi.ca launched, I immediately signed up for the open source microblogging service. I even built my own Laconi.ca instance - not necessarily because I intended using it but just to see how easy (or hard) it was to install and configure the software.

As a controlled experiment, I set myself the task of participating fully on identi.ca to see how long it would take me to acquire 100 friends on identi.ca. The answer, surprisingly, was 14 days.

Since then I have really enjoyed the sense of community on identi.ca, I have met lots of interesting people and enjoy the technically oriented focus of the folk over there. identi.ca isn't Twitter and the majority of my 'friends' steadfastly continue to use Twitter. This is understandable - Twitter gets all the media coverage. Twitter is where most people live and freedom is all about the freedom of choice.

I have continued to be a keen user and advocate of the identi.ca service as I think it offers several advantages over Twitter and it has genuinely made me consider the role of open source software versus proprietary systems with lock-in and closed data silos.

identi.ca has continued to be actively developed and it's exciting to follow developments and build each new version as it is released. Evan Prodromou and the identi.ca team actively participate on identi.ca and are genuinely responsive to honest, constructive feedback from users.

However, this week has seen a couple of developments that have sowed the first seeds of doubt about the future of identi.ca (not Laconi.ca) and raise a nagging concern.

The announcement of a hosted, off the shelf microblogging service - status.net with premium features costing undisclosed amounts of money. Obviously, Evan (and the identi.ca team) can't exist and feed their families on the many plaudits, thanks and congratulations of 60,000 identi.ca users and he was always going to have to monetize the service to pay his mortgage. However, the provision of a paid for service with premium features raises a few issues. In all the congratulatory coverage, sensible, intelligent people seem to have conveniently overlooked this particular 'elephant in the room'.

There is an obvious potential conflict of interest. If Microsoft are paying $50,000 for a hosted microblog and demand tight integration with Outlook which Evan fundamentally disagrees with, will he yield ? Will the development of other OpenMicroBlogging (OMB) functionality be delayed due to the demands of paying customers (large or small) on status.net ?

Obviously, identi.ca is built on Laconi.ca which is Open Source so anyone is free to fork the code and develop the software independently from Evan. For example, I could theoretically extract all my data from identi.ca, import it into my own Laconica instance and microblog away in the federation of Laconi.ca instances until my heart's content.

Today, we get another far more worrying piece of news - identi.ca obviously have more funding than I thought. My worries about Evan and his family living in a Montreal hostel, eating beans on toast and children with no shoes were clearly ill-founded. Identi.ca have announced the acquisition of Twitter.com with the following immediate results:

• identi.ca now has a Twitter like theme - urgh !
• We are already starting to see the inevitable influx of Twitter celebrities (Britney Spears, Barack Obama, Guy Kawasaki, Guy Cashmore, Jonathan Ross).
• The 'Featured' tab on identi.ca used to feature interesting individuals and long standing identi.ca advocates. Now it is consumed with Twitterati.
• It can only be a matter of time before the spammers follow

This reverse takeover of Twitter is rather like applauding The Clash's resolute refusal to play of Top of The Pops and then turning on your telly to see the band performing 'White Man in Hammersmith Palais' with Tony Blackburn as your smiling host.

To use another musical analogy, do you remember the very last song on the very last tour by the Sex Pistols in America and immortalised in the film 'Great Rock'n'Roll Swindle' ? After the last song, John Lydon squats down on his haunches and sneers at the audience.

'Do you ever feel like you've been cheated ?'

Well, Evan, yes - I do.