I don't understand why anyone would want to go to the trouble to do this. It feels like a huge step backwards.
Don't get me wrong, this is a cool idea and I'm all for building stuff 'just because', but I wouldn't it be just simpler/better to create cli wrapper for Twitter? (which probably exists). That all being said I'm not a big Twitter user, so maybe I'm missing some vital point here that is obvious to regular 'microbloggers'
Right now Twitter is up in arms about proposed changes which make users not have control over their feeds; there will be algorithmic curation so you only see the most popular content from your followers. "Just create a CLI wrapper" only works assuming the APIs are not effected by the changes they are making to the main product, which doesn't really make sense.
Again I don't quite get what Twitter is for, so maybe I'm missing something, but at least the publicity isn't an issue here since this seems to make it pretty hard to actually find people to follow.
Have you ever tried to run a mail server before? It's a nightmare wrapped in a fiasco.
Still a few issues though. Like how to overcome the whole network effect thing. These systems aren't very useful unless there's a large audience, and it's hard to draw a large audience if no one's there to begin with.