smtp micro-messaging – circa July 2009
In July 2009, I was tinkering with a project that at the time was called “nudges”. It simply used email (smtp) to create RSS feeds filled with micro-messages and attachments. The messages consisted of the text added as the email message Subject. The Body was ignored. Small attachments were supported and added as RSS Enclosures. XSLT was used to make the RSS Feed presentable in a web browser. The project was a challenge to the then struggling Twitter and the chatter around having an open distributed version of Twitter. I mainly was pointing out that Email works fine and to make Email more social, just email micro-messages to a script. The added benefit of having all Sent Messages saved automatically for archival and permanence was important. This is a topic I have been seeing creep back into the spotlight. Are social messages going into a void and a loop file effect? Again, using Email to cross-post to all your favorite social services saves you from this. Just filter and export your ‘Sent’ folder and you will have an archive of messages with dates, times and possibly other useful info.
I’m not going to go on about this. But it is interesting (ironic?) that the distributed nature of email is the holy grail of achievements in the federated micro-messaging and social networking space. I do agree and support these new efforts. Salmon, Webfinger, RSSCloud/PuSH and in general, DiSo. But I cannot let go of Email and how using it intelligently makes it so much more useful. So that is why I point out simple uses like this year old example of mine.
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