Interesting ideas. I think that anytime you pass data between code bases, you're going to end up converting it to/from json, xml, or some other intermediate format. It's a cost that I don't think we can avoid.<p>If you think outside the centralized server, I could fairly quickly implement my fragment of a distributed twitter. It's a matter of declaring a few objects/types, and writing code to do CRUD for my locally hosted parts, replicate those to some publicly accessible file host/web page, and them write an engine to scan all the other sites where the people I follow publish their data.<p>Two things that can't be replicated:<p><pre><code> 1> blocking of users. Once data is public, you don't get it back.
2> anonymous comments or replies. This would require scanning all replies, even of people you don't follow. It's possible this could be a service from a 3rd party aggregator.
</code></pre>
What I'm seeing most of all is a glimmer of what is possible if you don't have to worry about security, and just solve problems. The walled gardens are a result of security issues, the network effects are a result of the small number of walled gardens. <i>If</i> you can tell your computer to do function X with data Y, <i>and</i> there is NO possible way it could get hijacked or confused into doing Z, then this could work.