So, if you use Twitter, you know it's been borked up all day (see http://3.ly/nQG). We can't see other people's updates in real-time, which has all kinds of downstream effects, like not being able to re-tweet important messages. It's at times like this that I start thinking about alternatives. How can anyone involved with military affairs or law enforcement or other critical work actually take Twitter seriously when it is so unreliable?

Given that the startup costs of building an alternate system on an open-source platform are so relatively low, I'm starting to feel a bit surprised that no large company like Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, etc. has deployed something. I can see the television commericals now: "Twitter is for your kids. MicroTalk is for your business."

Yeah, sure, people can hold out and then try to acquire Twitter down the line.  But I think there's still a huge need for a reliable platform for business people that has a better user interface than Twitter.  And meanwhile, Facebook is making a good run at Twitter on the "fun" side of things.  We'll see what happens.  Twitter is fine a lot of the time, but I certainly wouldn't count on it!