So...after writing the Part I post, I found some odd issues with thrift (the details of which escape me now but had to do with weirdness when going between Java and Python) and so the Part II blog post never really happened.

Also, I found that for our use JSON serialization performance was comparable to Thrift, and I didn't need to constantly regenerate code and update IDL files to modify our messages. Also, I've started working on using AMQP as a transport for all these JSON messages.

I'll post more about my thoughts on AMQP, JSON, and messaging in general as I gather them.