Terry Jones

Sometime in the next few months, Fluidinfo will launch an alpha version of FluidDB, the database with the heart of a wiki. It’s a big engineering task, and there will still be a lot to do when we go into alpha, so we’ll initially only have a small number of applications being built on FluidDB.

But that doesn’t mean you can’t get into the action early.

Starting today, we’re pleased to offer FluidDB domains for free to Twitter users. This is perhaps the simplest way you’ll ever sign up for a new web service – if you’re a Twitter user:

Simply follow FluidDB on Twitter.

Yes, that’s it. You’re done.

Later, when we create your FluidDB domain, we’ll send you your FluidDB password via a direct message in Twitter. Note that we haven’t asked for your real name, your email, a password, sent you a cookie, or asked you to fill out a pesky sign-up form. The point here is simply to give you an early opportunity to trivially claim your preferred name.

Feel free to tweet the URL of this posting (http://bit.ly/bezc). You can follow me too for extra credit. If you’re not already a Twitter user and you want a free FluidDB domain name, sign up for Twitter, and then follow FluidDB.

Mini FAQ:

Why would I do this? By following FluidDB you will reserve your (Twitter) user name as your domain name in FluidDB.

Is there any charge? No.

What is a FluidDB domain? Sorry, but you’ll have to wait to find out the answer to this. We can tell you though that FluidDB domains will have many uses, and that they wont all be free.

What if I change my mind? Just unfollow FluidDB on Twitter.

Why Twitter? Because we like Twitter. We may do a similar thing for other services, allowing users to later claim their domain via OpenID, but that introduces the potential of naming conflicts.

Finally, please note that we can’t give an iron-clad guarantee that you’ll get your Twitter user name as your FluidDB domain name, but we’ll do our best. At this early stage of the game, we reserve the right to do whatever we want :-)