I think StatusNet is a very interesting project and one I've been following for a long time. It's a true Open Source project that seems to be a perfect storm of technologies that interest me and a commitment to openness that I admire.

What really excites me about StatusNet, though, is challenge of federation. StatusNet installs currently ship with an implementation of a protocol known as OpenMicroBlogging. This means that you (or your company / organization or book club) can have your own real-time, micro messaging site (read: your own twitter) and if there's someone not on your site you'd like to follow, you can do so without having to register (and monitor) multiple sites.

We're currently planning a major update to the protocol to take advantage of some of the exciting new stuff like PubSubHubbub and ActivityStreams. I'm excited to get to work on the protocol and implementation and tell you all about it :-)