I think it's less of a "build a replacement for twitter" kind of thing and more along the lines of "build another twitter, but better." So it's a difference of degree, not kind.

This sucks. A distributed social network would be incredibly cool. On the other hand we've known we've needed one for a long time but nobody can seem to build on that catches on. Maybe there's a reason for that.

Here's a question for the app.net leadership. If app.net ever became successful, and someone came along with a real distributed social network and tried to Padlister your Craigslist, what would you do? Does your commitment to open APIs extend that far?

This post sounds more negative than I intended. Marginal improvement is still improvement! I'm actually starting to get kind of excited to see what happens.