The open-source microblogging software Laconica was developed by the company of the same name, owned by Evan Prodromou, starting around 2007. It was to be the basis of the social network Identi.ca, and a hosting service for the internal networks of various companies. Since Laconica was open-source, any user had the right to run their own public instance of the software, and Prodromou wanted these instances to be able to communicate with one another, like e-mail servers.