StatusNet Cloud Service Opens To The Public

StatusNet Cloud Service (SCS) is launching it’s public beta today, so anyone can start their own status update site. This essentially means that any individual or company can quickly and easily start their own Twitter-type site using the SCS. It might seem like a waste of time to start your own status update site, but many brands and individuals are already having success with it. There are over 10million users signing up for these type of niche communities.

StatusNet also implements the OStatus open standard.  This lets people on different social networks follow each other, creating a distributed network that spans multiple sites and services. OStatus isn’t a new protocol by itself, but weaves together other protocols to create the distributed social network;

• Activity Streams encode social events in standard Atom or RSS feeds.
• PubSubHubbub pushes those feeds in realtime to subscribers across the Web.
• Salmon notifies people of responses to their status updates.
• Webfinger makes it easy to find people across social sites.

“OStatus, and its component parts, form the basis for what’s coming next, and it’s thrilling to see Status.net, in particular, put these technologies to effective use — driving forward the next generation of online social experiences.” -Chris Messina, Open Web Advocate at Google

To get your own StatusNet site running, you can download the software (free) and install it on your own server. If you don’t really feel like getting your hands dirty, you can opt for the Cloud Account. Your StatusNet site can be Single-user, Private, or Community:

• Single-user – Great for bloggers, marketers, or others looking for a social-media platform.
• Private – For companies or groups to share their status privately.
• Community – For Web communities to share status.

There are also premium plans available that allow you to, among other things, get rid of ads and create your own theme to match your brand. When you sign up, you’ll end up with something like YourName.status.net. If you take the premium route, you can use your own domain.

The most known of these StatusNet sites is Identi.ca, which many still use as a Twitter alternative (it posts your updates to Twitter for you as well). Other organizations are actively using the service as well, some for private communications within their company. Some of these include Creative Commons, Mozilla, Motorola, and Canonical.

“StatusNet has filled a communications gap for Creative Commons that we didn’t know we had. With a team distributed by time zone, travel, expertise, and use of various communications methods (email overload, IM, IRC, phone), StatusNet is accessible and usable by the whole staff and has become an invaluable tool for keeping us all in sync.” -Mike Linksvayer, Vice President of Creative Commons