Tweetdeck to allow users to communicate even when Twitter is down?

This piece is pure conjecture.

I read somewhere that Tweetdeck has a feature, or is planning a feature, that allows their users to continue to communicate with each other when Twitter is down. I’d like to know if this is true, or if anyone else heard this.

One thing I know for sure is that Seesmic bought ping.fm, which allows their users to post to a variety of services, not just Twitter.

I have no idea what else is coming, but I bet there’s more like this. I don’t think it’s bad, I just think it’s a sign that the exclusivity of Twitter is becoming a problem for the client vendors, and they’re spreading out, but not in a compatible way.

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Will users of Seesmic be able to communicate with Tweetdeck users if Twitter goes down? What about the equivalent feature that Seesmic probably has in the pipe? Will Tweetdeck users be able to connect in to their network? Or are we looking at silos?

And if I were one of these guys I’d be tempted to provide for enclosures, or relax the 140-char limit for in-network communication.

This is how lock-in creeps into a segments of a market that’s built on lock-in (Twitter’s). Once Twitter has theirs it makes sense for the clients to want their own. The lock-in is bad for users, but you can understand why the vendors want it.

Time to start thining about next steps.

Update: Comment from Iain Dodsworth, Tweetdeck Founder.

“It’s fascinating though and completley indicative of the kinds of functionality we brainstorm on.

We have looked into this previously Not sure a failover system now has the demand it once would have had – Twitter stability is much better.

Dave’s post did lead onto an interesting conversation around Twitter client interop – which I imagine was his intention in the first place, the failover system being an illustrative point.”