Since the nerds founded the Twitter community, I wouldn't be surprised to see the next move be some sort of open, distributed, federated Twitter-clone that mirrors the existing APIs. Easy win for the client developers, no one to be a buzzkill, and it's not like spam can be any worse than it is now anyway.
I've used identi.ca almost as long as twitter, and my preferred client Twidroyd on the Android supports both of them (thanks to the fact that identi.ca has an option to use an API made to emulate the twitter-API).
I highly prefer identi.ca to twitter, and the only thing keeping me on the twitter-network at all is the fact that most of the people I follow only are on twitter, and for some strange reason it's very hard to convince people to change, even though, in my opinion, identi.ca is superior.
I really hope they soon manage to get a twitter-pull up and running (they have been talking about that for a long time now). If they managed that I would convert fully to identi.ca.
Edit: Got to update my browser more often... Sorry bingaman
Generally I almost only use free software, and prefer open-platforms whenever possible. I actually can't remember the last time I used non-free software.
You can see this in action at https://identi.ca/conversation/60337615 (which also points out some of the rough edges).
well, if one didn't put him/herself into Myspace in the first place, the one wouldn't need to seek refuge.