TinyFeed is a WordPress widget which loads a microblog status feed via Ajax. It is currently restricted to microblogs with Twitter-compatible APIs, so only Twitter and Identi.ca.
I wrote it for one reason: I think the default RSS feed WordPress plugin is lame. I didn’t like PHP retrieving the feed and having the page wait to load because of it. Even though it caches the feed, for frequently updated feeds it just doesn’t make sense. Loading the feed via Ajax shaved seconds off of my page load time. I was so immensely happy with it that I decided to widgetize it and share it.
The current release of the widget is also the first, so there may be a few bugs to work out. But I also use this personally, so it should be stable enough for normal use.

TinyFeed

TinyFeed is a Wordpress widget which loads a microblog status feed via Ajax.

haliphax

The plugin currently offers caching and multi-widget functionality (so that the widget can be placed on a page multiple times, each tracking a different status feed with a separate set of configuration values).
Future versions will include more out-of-the-box service options, status feed filters (to selectively include/exclude status posts containing a given keyword/phrase), and more!
<h3>Configuration</h3>
For each instance of the widget, different configuration values can be specified. For the time being only <a href="http://identi.ca" rel="nofollow ugc">identi.ca</a> and <a href="http://twitter.com" rel="nofollow ugc">Twitter</a> are supported out-of-the-box, but any service that provides a Twitter-like API can be fed to the widget.
You may set the widget’s title (which will be linked to your identi.ca profile), the screen name whose feed you will be polling, the GMT offset of your desired location (in minutes), the number of posts to pull (0 for the maximum), and the number of minutes to cache the status (0 for the maximum). As of v1.2, you may also choose to exclude replies and re-posts.
Note: You may customize the styles for the status feed’s time stamps, etc., by modifying the styles.css file in the plugin’s directory. Future versions will allow for custom CSS to be configured right in the widget options form.
<h3>License</h3>
Copyright 2011 Todd Boyd
This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify 
it under the terms of the GNU General Public License as published by 
the Free Software Foundation, either version 2 of the License, or 
(at your option) any later version.
This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, 
but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of 
MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the 
GNU General Public License for more details.
You should have received a copy of the GNU General Public License 
along with this program. If not, see <a href="http://www.gnu.org/licenses/" rel="nofollow ugc">http://www.gnu.org/licenses/</a>.

What's My Status?

This plugin provides a widget to display the feed of a given user's posts on identi.ca, Twitter, or any service that offers a Twitter-like API.

TinyFeed vs What's My Status?