In a move that I suspect will benefit both parties immensely, the latest version of Twhirl now supports the new indenti.ca microblogging service.

This just cements Twhirl as the desktop client of choice, since it already supported not only Twitter, but Friendfeed and Seesmic accounts (not to mention allowing broadcasting to Jaiku and Pownce).

So what is indenti.ca? As they explain on the Twhirl blog:

identi.ca is a very young service, just a few weeks old. So please keep in mind that it does not support all functionality you are used to from twitter. For example, it does not allow to send private, direct messages, so everything you post is visible to everyone.

Not to mention no text-messaging support either! So why bother integrating it? Because it is built from the ground up to be far more stable and scalable!

As CNET exclusively reported:

…the Twhirl client won’t have to ping the Identi.ca servers to get updates; instead, updates will be sent directly to the Twhirl client. This makes nanoblog conversations more live–you can have a back-and-forth without hovering over the “update” button. It also means that your Twhirl client doesn’t have to be hitting the Identi.ca servers every few minutes for updates, which reduces the load profile on the service, theoretically at least.

So how is this win-win for both Twhirl and identi.ca? Twhirl gets a more robust alternative (ie no FailWhales) to Twitter, something that will keep people using it’s software. identi.ca gets to tap into an existing user-base, something that will help give it momentum, and encourage developers to extended its feature-set to be a true competitor to Twitter. How they solve the Web->SMS problem though, I am very keen to see.

Right, the best for last. Rumor has it that integrated time-lines are in Twhirl’s immediate future; ie one time-line, multiple services. If they would just switch Pownce and Jaiku from broadcast/cross-posting to full integration we would be just about there.

Previously:

• Seesmic acquires Twhirl, as it continues to grow beyond being just a twitter client
• Twhirl moves beyond twitter now updates to Jaiku and Pownce

(Apparently, I really like Twhirl…)