I believe competition is motivation for staying on top of your game. Does Twitter have a real competitor out there? - Bwana ☠

Jaiku, Pownce, Tumblr - Morton Fox

http://web.archive.org/web... - Morton Fox

Is that it Morton? heheh. Um.. WOW - Bwana ☠

I'm sure there are more now. That list is old. (In this context, from last year = old :) ) - Morton Fox

Such a long list, but how many of us even have accounts on half of those. I knew it was a lot of imitators, but wow...wow... - Bwana ☠

How do we define a competitor? Here's a stab at a definition: (1) Microblogging capability. (2) Abiltiy to establish "friend" relationships. (3) Support of web, SMS, and mobile web. (4) Multi-language support. (5) More than 20,000 users - otherwise Scoble, Calacanis, and Obama won't bother with it. I suspect that many of the services in Morton's list may fail item 5. I'd like to hear other definitions of a Twitter competitor; I probably missed some key points. - Ontario Emperor

Ontario, I think those are good standards for a Twitter competitor. In my mind, only Pownce and Jaiku are real competitors. - Shey, Jamaican of FF

I think if Google decided to let its millions of users know about Jaiku, it could be a serious competitor to both Twitter and FriendFeed. Jaiku has SMS support, you can comment, import all of your feeds, etc. Granted I like FriendFeed and Twitter much better, but I think with Google's clout, Jaiku could compete. - Chris Rossini

Also need a way to have posts on Jaiku not take 45 minutes to show up at Friendfeed. - Morton Fox

@Chris Maybe Google is working on making sure Jaiku will be stable enough? - Shey, Jamaican of FF

@Shey Your guess is as good as mine...I do like to think that Google purchased Jaiku for a reason...even though they haven's shown us anything yet. - Chris Rossini

Does anyone remember irc? - TranceMist

@Chris Probably has something to do with their master plan of taking over the world. Maybe I should join, why resist from now? - Shey, Jamaican of FF

Pownce and Jaiku @Morton Tumblr? I don't think so - Corvida

awww... a warm fuzzy moment to remember IRC... thanks TranceMist!! - Nancy Babyak

Jaiku even has commenting, such as this one about Friendfeed ... http://jezlyn.jaiku.com/presenc... - Ashton

@Trancemist - I use IRC daily as it is the second best way to get a hold of me ay anytime - if you know me that is :) if not then I'm just another nobody on Twitter and FreiendFeed - Steven Hodson

I still use IRC daily Trance. When i first joined Twitter, I thought of it as a world wide asynchronous irc chat room :) - Bwana ☠

I go where the action is, regardless of whether or not it's good or not. That's the nightclub model. It's irrational consumer behavior. Kinda like how the iPod isn't the *best* mp3 player by way of features, but it has the unmeasurable issue of *cool*. There is no algorithm for sex appeal and social media suffers the same fate. You aren't just selling me, you are selling to my entire sphere, which is mighty sexy. - Eric Rice

How does Friendfeed's "Share something" compare? (I'm asking as I'm not a Twitter user.) - Philipp Lenssen

The "share something" is more powerful and has wider boundaries. Since it can have short updates or large ones, it's kind of different in my opinion. Twitter is limited to text while "share something" can share pictures, links or text. - Bwana ☠

FRIENDFEED! 'nuf said. - Susan Beebe

Jaiku (now part of Google) will return as a Twitter competitor when they release next version on Google Apps. also expect it to be Android friendly - ron k jeffries