Webtropic

Today identica rolled out a new, well, a new bit of everything: new version, new interface, new functions and features, new optimism on the field.

It’s been sometime since I last checked so I am not 100% sure what was already there and what appeared today, but I am pretty sure that the ‘groups’ are brand new!
Yeah, you got it right: groups! Birds  of a feather etc. Anyone can open a new group and anyone can join.
When posting, by prefixing the group name with a “!”, one can send an update to all the members of the group, regardless if he is subscribed to them. Feels like a hybrid of friendfeed rooms and facebook groups and it can be extemely useful for noise reduction (or amplification), if left untouched by spanmers. Because it is the kind of functionality they would drool upon.

Other goodies?

• Autofollowing your subscribers (recommended for bots).
• SMS updates (lots of carriers supported).
• Twitter cross posting and autotracking and following your twitter friends in identica.
• PMs and Favs for those who can’t live without them .
• IM interface.
• A new pretty functional design.

And, finally, a few bugs.

I am sure I missed things as I was hastily checking between dining and packing.

The important thing is that identica is moving to the right direction.

No, it won’t replace twitter but might shake it out of its inertia.

Remembering that identica is based on laconica, which is open source and supports federation, what i expect it to become, is a community tool. The evolution of a forum.
And since microblogging is already making advances in the corporate environment, I expect it to be a viable alternative to the likes of yammer.
This is already a lot.

(apologies for the abse

nce of links, I am writing this on my iPod touch)