Twitter ripping off laconi.ca/StatusNet is just plain false, unless @maiyannah means that twitter learned and improved by looking at laconi.ca features. But I wouldn't agree with that either. If it had features over twitter at that time, apart from the federation features, it learned them from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jaiku .
(another innovative and service acquired and shuttered, Sir Tim bless its soul, by Google)