When I began using Twitter earlier last year, I'm not sure that I was aware of its open source competitor, Identi.ca, or its relationship to Laconica.

While Twitter has had its share of knocks, from outtages to phishing attacks, I've not been personally affected. Microblogging has been more of a diversion than a tool (though this isn't always the case), Twitter is ubiquitous, and I simply used it.

I'm not sure what made me take Identi.ca for a test drive, or look further at what Laconica can offer open blogging standards and social networks as a whole. The open nature and standards have the needle spiking wildly on my "geek-meter," and a lot of that spiking can be directly attributed to the way these services benefit everyone -- whether they be a tech enthusiast, or slightly less tech averse than a Luddite.

Lots of people are addicted to microblogging service Twitter - including substantial chunks of some open source communities. There are a fair number of Ruby on Rails developers twittering these days, for example. But Twitter's scaling and reliability issues lately have many people wondering whether it's time to look for an alternative. Identi.ca, backed by open source package Laconica, wants to be that alternative.