Click on the above image to go to the original version. Original version made by Flickr user Mr. Wright.

Ever since Twitter’s famous fail whales started appearing, a group of people (including me) started looking for alternative microblogging services. I experimented with identi.ca, which runs on the open source laconi.ca microblogging software. However, the alternative microblogging service that most stood out to me as a viable competitor to Twitter is Kwippy. First, take a gander at Kwippy’s looks.

See that little green rectangle with “Feedback” written there at the top? The feedback button is easy to find, and a user can quickly give suggestions to the Kwippy team. The Kwippy folks were smart enough to put the feeback feedback button right where nearly everybody can see it.

It’s great that Kwippy really wants your feedback, but what I think is even better is that individual kwips can have comments.

Click on the above screenshot to see it full size.

This solves the problem that Twitter users have faced with the @reply feature. In Twitter, replying to a user’s tweet does not indicate which tweet of the user you are replying to. Kwippy avoids this by allowing comments for kwips. Comments cannot reply to other comments, but commentors (for the lack of a better term) can be notified of upcoming comments if they wish.

Like Twitter and some other services, Kwippy also has an IM bot that you can use to post kwips. The IM bot will notify if another user friends you, buzzes you, favorites one of your kwips, or comments on a thread you are tracking. All of the notifications are configurable, so you can decide if you do not want to hear certain notifications.

Hmm, I seem to have forgotten what character limit kwips and comments have. Oh wait, they don’t. Kwips and comments do not have a character limit, and this is one of the more interesting things about the service. Kwippy’s blog has posted their reasoning on why they have not put a character cap.

Okay, so the Kwippy folks want feedback, make good user interfaces, allow comments for individual kwips, and don’t put a character limit on kwips and comments. But what about scalability? Will Kwippy be able to handle a Twitter-like userbase? You can look at the inner details as another official Kwippy blog post gives stunning insight on the technology that Kwippy runs on. Whether or not Kwippy can scale to huge amounts of users remains to be seen.

Unfortunately, Kwippy is an invite-only service. Existing Kwippy users have infinite invites, so it should be very easy to obtain a Kwippy invite.

Now, if you’ve glanced at the title, I’m assuming that you’re waiting for the interview with Kwippy CEO Mayank Dhingra. Mayank consented to an email interview, and here are the responses to the questions that I asked him (some spelling/grammar corrected).

Q1: Having a business model is crucial for a startup. How does Kwippy plan to make money?

A: Well leaving aside ads as a backup we are exploring other options which haven’t been used elsewhere.

Q2: Another thing crucial to a startup’s success is the ability to learn from mistakes. What have you learned from the mistakes of other microblogging services and what mistakes have you made in the development of Kwippy?

A: In hindsight you always realize there are things that shouldn’t have been done or could have been done better. Scalability/Stability is one of the most prominent problem haunting the microblogging world but their are some other less prominent problems like [the] “complete disappearance of the blogging perspective” & monetization. We’ve been quite aware of them from start and are constantly trying to do our best in taking care of them.

Q3: Why did you even want to start a microblogging service in the first place?

A: Kwippy started as a “IM Status aggregator” in the first place, then we added ability to have discussions over them, by this time all of us were avid microbloggers but our understanding of microblogging was quite different from the existing services and thus kwippy evolved into a “Microblogging App” in an effort to bring out the best of blogging and microblogging worlds.

Q4: What would you say to people that say Kwippy and other smaller microblogging services will never take over Twitter?

A: All I can in this regard is Twitter has the first mover & Community advantages working in its favor. Community is built over time, it was the case with twitter and it certainly will be the case with others. I strongly feel any service which offers a better yet easy approach to microblogging and manages to stay up has a good chance to be successful.

Q5: In one sentence, please summarize what sets Kwippy apart from similar microblogging services.

A: Till we implement all that we have plans for[,] it will [take the] “IM Status aggregation and Blogging like approach.” Also [a] lack of whales or other creatures

Q6: What has been the most enjoyable part of being part of Kwippy?

A: From coding to evangelizing every bit has been exciting but nothing compares the joy of creating a product that evolves according to user feedback and makes people who are part of the change very happy.

Q7: If you are willing, can you give us a sneak peek of some upcoming features in Kwippy?

A: Next in line would be import/invite features. Making friends,  adding support for more channels and other small things to make the site more engaging and viral.

Q8: What is the number one reason that an existing Twitter user should switch to Kwippy?

A: Because kwippy is “Microblogging redefined”

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Want to see even more coverage on Kwippy? There are two posts on the official Kwippy blog that have lists of more blog posts covering Kwippy.

Also, as a Kwippy user (my Kwippy page here), I have infinite Kwippy invites to distribute to you. Post your email address in the comments if you want a Kwippy invite.

Also, I apologize for the lolcat at the top of this post. I couldn’t resist.