Open source Twitter competitor Identi.ca has had a lot positive buzz and powerful early adopters, but it sure does not feel to me like they’ll have any more luck than Pownce or Plurk has in overtaking Twitter as the microblogging platform of choice.

Some of the challenge is simple convenience – people who are on Twitter are going to be reluctant to spend the (small but annoying amounts of) time needed to sign up new contacts and reconfigure devices.

But mostly I think Twitter just enjoys the big advantage of being the service the introduced a lot of people to the art of posting notes to friends and followers and linking to blogs and articles as you see fit.    I don’t like the term “microblogging” because I think few of the twitter comments rise to the level of a blog post, but clearly this approach is gaining ground and perhaps more widespread appeal than blogging because it requires so little time and effort.