There have been so many systems for blogging and micro-blogging. There
still are. They were all large chunks of code, that you had to run on
your server. It has to be set up, it has to be maintained, and updated.
And then ... what? Your little community probably won't grow very large.
It will die sooner or later, leaving you with the question: "Do I keep
this thing running? Mhh, it's just me, the others have left. I'll delete
it." Because, you know, why keep the sysadmin burden of maintaining that
huge pile of code on your server? Nah.
The obvious alternative is to use a hosted service. Bam, Twitter,
popular. For various reasons, I don't want to deal with Twitter or any
other centralised commercial product like it.
Now, twtxt doesn't require *any code* on the server. You just host a
file and be done with it. No updates, no broken dependencies, no exposed
vulnerable software, nothing. I don't have to care about it -- just like
a hosted service!
This also means, I can let my file sit and rot for a year. If I needed
some server-side software for it, I would have long deleted it. But that
single file doesn't matter. If it was a hosted service, they might have
deleted my account due to inactivity.
Simple systems are good. They have limitations, but also huge
advantages.
