I'm not sure if it's even possible to build a twitter-like system with distributed servers in the vein of e-mail. It's possible for e-mail because it's a one-way system. Twitter has the concept of following a user, and that user's tweets appear to me. It's a 2-way system that needs to constantly be kept in sync. Even if it's possible to do, it won't be easy, with loads of extra technical challenges that SMTP doesn't have.
Comments
I'm not sure if it's even possible to build a twitter-like system with distributed servers in the vein of e-mail. It's possible for e-mail because it's a one-way system. Twitter has the concept of following a user, and that user's tweets appear to me. It's a 2-way system that needs to constantly be kept in sync. Even if it's possible to do, it won't be easy, with loads of extra technical challenges that SMTP doesn't have.
There was already an open standard to do everything but the private messaging part: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/OStatus