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What’s the Big Deal About Jaiku?
By Mark Evans | August 31, 2008
For months, there’s been this subtle but persistent buzz about Jaiku, the microblogging service that Google acquired last October, and then took into stealth mode.
Having not used Jaiku before Google swooped in, I didn’t have a feel for what Jaiku did or how it was any different from Twitter or Pownce. But I was curious to see why there was so much interest in it.
Step one was getting an invitation, which happened a few days ago.
Step two was signing up, a process that involved getting a confirmation code sent to my Blackberry so I could enter it at Jaiku.com.
Step three was playing with Jaiku to get a feel for what it’s all about.
Conclusion: I’m not sure why anyone would think Jaiku is going to make life difficult for Twitter or, for that matter, Pownce.
From what I can tell, Jaiku is your basic microblogging service with a few nice twists (e.g. the ability to easy add feeds for blogs, music, photos and events. The wildcard may be Jaiku’s interesting mobile offering, which could fit into the gPhone or the Android platform.
Jaiku is very Twitter-like so it’s difficult to see why people would jump on the Jaiku bandwagon when there’s already an established player. Google could always encourage people to use Jaiku by integrating it with other Google services but if anyone was looking to be blown away by Jaiku, they’re probably going to be disappointed.
Before dismissing Jaiku, I want to give it the benefit of the doubt. Perhaps there are features in the pipeline that will make Jaiku more compelling. Maybe Jaiku will resonate as a mobile tool given its European (Finnish) roots. Until that happens, I’ll continue to Twitter and sometimes Pownce.
If you’re also on Jaiku, here’s my Jaiku profile.
For other views on Jaiku, check out WebWorkerDaily and The Inquisitr.
Technorati Tags: jaiku, Google , Twitter
Topics: Web 2.0 |
August 31st, 2008 at 9:25 am
Mark, I don’t think there can be any doubt that Google see this as part of their mobile future - otherwise would not have sat on it for a year after buying it before doing anything. The fact that it was created by ex nokia people also adds to the mobile slant. Twitter and Pownse have failed to get real mainstream adoption - at least in the uk, where if you askes most people in the street what iit was you’d get blank stares - so there is still that potential market to capture and the big G just maybe able to do it as aprt of an intergrated mobile offering.
Also because Jaiku does the whole ‘lifestream’ thing - and has from the get go, it also poses a challenge to Friendfeed as well.
All that said, I’m still not convinced Google may have not left it too late. Will be interesting to se what happens when android actually hits some real phones.
August 31st, 2008 at 9:48 am
A few things about Jaiku which make it interesting:
1) The channels/groups. Twitter could so use this feature.
2) The threaded messages are way better than what we have in Twitter.
3) It’s owned by Google. I expect it to scale way better than what Twitter has been able to demonstrate to date.
4) The mobile integration you already mentioned– time will tell.
August 31st, 2008 at 10:39 am
jaiku has been around for a very long time. google has been sitting on it since they bought them — and now, with all of the new invites going out, one good question to ask… should we be reconsidering jaiku at this juncture (or will google probably not update anything for another year)?
http://web-poet.com/2008/08/31/wouldnt-you-shouldnt-you/
August 31st, 2008 at 11:12 am
[...] What’s the Big Deal About Jaiku? [...]
August 31st, 2008 at 1:30 pm
Having now Plurk, Identi.ca (open-sourced as Laconi.ca), Rejaw will make it harder for Jaiku. It’s nice that they added some FriendFeed and twitterfeed functionality, but this will also add more noise and may make the service less attractive. Twitter is already mobile on all platforms so Jaiku adds nothing new there.
August 31st, 2008 at 11:12 pm
Surprised no-one has mentioned the S60 angle. Jaiku is hugely improved with the Nokia S60 client, which has very cool location awareness and mobile presence (very different from the lightweight mobile apps for Twitter). With a large enough user base and proper embedded mobile apps for other platforms, in addition to the features everyone mentions above, Google could really offer much more than Twitter if only they chose to do so.
September 1st, 2008 at 9:46 am
What I love about Jaiku is that it’s from the same generation of microblogging platforms as Twitter. They’re both the same age.
Twitter is popular in America and most of the world because it’s the most written about. Twitter stopped SMS to Europe because of cost. All mobile twitter alternatives are limited by the Api being so restrictive in refresh rate.
Jaiku is great because it’s had threading since the beginning, has a great mobile app for those lucky enough for a symbian and allows you never to use sms. It’s also got e-mail notification so in conjunction with gmail it’s a really nice platform.
It’s also a precursor to friendfeed.
As to identi.ca army.twit.tv and pownce they’re just wannabe applications that are copying an old idea because of how mediocre twitter service has been.
Rejaw and plurk are lateral thinking and could have been interesting if other more time efficient versions had not already become so popular.
What do I know about the topic, 35,000 tweets over the period of a year with a peak of 5700 in a single month.
Why I liked twitter, because in London everyone used it.
Why I like jaiku? Because it’s a great mobile application
It’s the future.
September 6th, 2008 at 1:19 pm
[...] What’s the Big Deal About Jaiku? [...]
September 7th, 2008 at 4:44 pm
[...] What’s the Big Deal About Jaiku? [...]
September 15th, 2008 at 9:50 am
There is no big deal between Jaiku, Plurk of Twitter. They are just competitors in a microblogging sector. These are services that let you say what you did or what you are actually doing. Fine. We tried to got one step further and let people say what they are going to do or would like to do in a really simple way. We call it microscheduling or instantcalendaring. Come and check. http://www.mixin.com