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I thought that calling patent infringement based on a patent you applied for is illegal. I thought you have to have been awarded the actual patent.

My understanding of patent laws is near non-existant, though. I wouldn't be surprised if I was wrong.

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I believe you are correct. Moreover, since every rails tutorial know to man builds a twitter/microblogging/messaging clone, odds are likely that this will not be awarded simply because the application's technology is obvious at this point.

I may be too optimistic though.

That hasn't stopped blatantly obvious patents to be filed. You are being extremely optimistic. USPTO will issue a patent nearly for any software related invention even with prior art.

I'm not an expert either, but one thing to keep in mind is that they're not calling patent infringement just yet, they're just subtly pointing out it might be.

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