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Robert Scoble
Robert Scoble
Why isn't Jaiku discussed much as a serious Twitter competitor? I just took another look and I hate the UI. Plus it's ssslllooowwww.
May 28, 2008 from Twitter - Comment - Share
FriendFeed is so much better it isn't funny. Discuss Jaiku here. I'll post more of my thoughts shortly. UPDATE: @patphelan says it's about people, not UI. I don't agree totally. Yes, if everyone were over on Jaiku I'd probably put up with the ugly UI, but there's a reason why they didn't move and we're moving to FriendFeed. - Robert Scoble
anyone have an invite? - Brooks Bayne
I tried Jaiku for all of 5 minutes. It was just clunky as hell, really slow (like you mentioned) and there was nobody there that interested me. - Zach Flauaus
@ismaild says that Jaiku is not a Twitter competitor. I disagree. The usage model is very similar to Twitter and, for that matter, FriendFeed. Now it's not a very good competitor, that's true, but it is a competitor. - Robert Scoble
It's still closed to new registrations. I wonder if Google is working on scaling the databases or if they've simply placed it on ice for awhile? - Dusty Dean
i think friendfeed beats out jaiku because of the spartan interface and because friendfeed is like the only web 2.0 not in freaking beta. - Tyler Gillies
Responding to @paulfabretti on Twitter. FriendFeed has far better groupings and far better search engine and far faster response time. - Robert Scoble
Dusty: I'll try to find out what Google's plans are for Jaiku tomorrow at the Google Developer Conference. - Robert Scoble
seriously and this will sound strange, its a geek hangout, I am clever than you syndrome, I know more about Nokia than you, used it at the start and love it but then a few hotshots came in and now they rule - Patphelan
Jaiku have missed the boat. Twitter and FriendFeed have blitzed the competition. - Michael McGimpsey
Jaiku is still in closed beta, nobody will use it if they can't get an invite. - Graeme Shaw
Graeme: even if they let everyone in nobody would use it. FriendFeed kicks its behind. - Robert Scoble
Pownce is awfully slow, too. Is there something fundamentally flawed about the numberless database queries that these services do? - Dusty Dean
@all try meemi.com in the next days we release our API and Widget. For now not is possible that an user include "other feed" but this is the next feature. In the next time we share the our thread on other platform so every bloggers have a centralized platform for comment (like disq.us) ... we introduce the video and audio post so we have many type than tumblr ;) ... try we waiting feedbak :) - Capobecchino (Enrico)
Twitter v Jaiku is horses for courses. Twitter is like a cacophony of cell phone users chatting on a public bus. Jaiku is threaded truly machine-aware. Its mobile client runs snappily quick among our workgroup, showing the city name of people and their availability. But if you don't have friends on Jaiku, it probably seems boring, or even too European. As Jyri could tell you during the GDC, there are distributed nodes on the GAE that Jaiku could use to great effect. Time will tell. - Bernie Goldbach
Because it's still closed too.. - Xavier Moisant from twhirl
if it is no good, why Google bought it? - Jansen Lu
remember that twitter is txt while jaiku is the phone. combine with android. think again. - kosmar
Can you still sign up for Jaiku if you're invited? Or, is it closed to all new registrations regardless of invites? - Dusty Dean
I love the speed of FriendFeed's comments/likes/edits... I worked with some Social aggregation companies, and they were all kind of blah... Spock looked good extracting pictures and keywords from pages, but FriendFeed grabbed my attention by extracting the feeds. Wow! Just my guess, but the FriendFeed engineers are probably way better than the Twitter guys. Good programmers and designers making sharp choices. - Mitchell Tsai
Hey Robert, it was me who prompted you to discuss this (via email). I like Jaiku, but yes it does look like Friendfeed is massively quicker. Something I hadn't considered before... - Ben Gracewood
Jaiku didn't build the community strategically, by courting/wooing the people w/ the biggest social graph. We migrate to where our friends are. Where's their community evangelist? I attend many podcamps/blog/social media events, never seen them there. Not even signage. You have to be IN community to create one. - annie heckenberger
To get the true T vs. J comparison, you need to run m.twitter.com on a cell phone against the Jaiku client on a cell phone. You need to have smart friends in both settings. Then land in a foreign place and ask your mobile client a question. If you have smart friends in both use cases, you'll have a meaningful shoot-out. If all your posse hangs out in one kingdom, you've already made your microblogging choice. - Bernie Goldbach
and you need invitation..... - Laurentiu
Bernie, could you explain that node system quickly? - Fredrik Nordmoen
Who needs an invite? - Raanan Avidor
I just signed into my Jaiku account (forgot I had one) and I don't follow anybody. Why? Because it's boring. FriendFeed and Twitter have all the talk going on. - Zach Flauaus
I suppose I need to properly use it before I launch a barrage of criticisms. - Dusty Dean
you can't check friendfeed from twitter, but you can check twitter from friendfeed - Tyler Gillies
i need invite please - Tyler Gillies
Jaiku is being remodelled to work on app engine and was showed of as part of the app engine announcements, also a UI cleanup? - Mike Scott
It's amazing how much an easy and fast sign up process will attract new users. I had a friend this evening who was only moderately interested in Twitter take the plunge because the sign up was such a snap. - Dusty Dean
OK, two huge things missing from Friendfeed are SMS and IM integration - Ben Gracewood
I've always prefered Jaiku, I liked the extra functionality it had that Friendfeed has now implemented, but it was like being in a fun fair on your own, great for a while, but ultimately quite dull with no-one to share it with. - Stuart Grimshaw
I don't see any differenc abotu what we are doing here than we would on Jaiku. Different UI siure (although you might argue that Jaiku layout was the insipiration for Apple's threaded SMS conversations on the iPhone!). There is equal access to a wide variety of content that users bring into FF/Jaiku (blogs, feeds, flickr etc.) and can discuss each. Furthermore, Jaiku has a fantastic mobile app. FF doesn't even have a mobile site! - Paul Fabretti
People will use any platform if it works and 'feels right.' For me, Jaiku feels all wrong. - Jim Connolly
email for invite is tjgillies@gmail.com and as far as mobile integration for FF isn't there fftogo.com? - Tyler Gillies
To sum up my thoughts. Jaiku = closed, then they won't have the same amount of users as Twitter and/or FF. In the end it's the number of users who decides, I'm not going to join a social-friend-something when all my friends are using another service. - Fredrik Nordmoen
Paul: I use FF all the time from my iPhone and Nokia phones. Works just fine and I like it better than trying to load some software on my phone. - Robert Scoble
I'm in Jaiku also and while I like some of it, FriendFeed+Twitter is generally much nicer combination of tools for conversation. - Daniel Schildt
I don't know if anyone has noticed but Facebook has added several more services to their 'Import' feature on the mini-feed. It goes beyond Digg, Flickr, and Picasa now to a few more services. It's something they should have done a long time ago and they are still not utilizing all of the possible services out there. - Dusty Dean
used to use jaiku more than twitter but jaiku was always bogging down, and didn't have a mobile friendly site [dunno if they already have 1 now], i liked that you could feed it stuff like rss from your blogs or flickr streams etc. but in the end i just fed twitter to jaiku. - Vincent B Castro
FriendFeed is so fast and you can pull in feeds from all over. It seems like such a winning model at the moment. I'm impressed at how fast my Twitter updates appear on FF as it seems like it's real time. - Dusty Dean
@Fredrik Nordmoen On my Nokia S60 edition phones, Jaiku knows where it is located in the world. So when I walked Copenhagen, Jaiku showed me the name of the borough where it was connected to the 3G network. In Ireland, Jaiku tells people the name of the nearest city when my phone attaches itself to a nearby cell mast. When I am using my phone for some data tasks, Jaiku shows me as a green dot. When I change my phone's profile to a silent one, Jaiku shows me as a red (unavailable) dot. This is handy for me, - Bernie Goldbach
@Robert fair point, although having used Jaiku since "the early days", mobile browsing has come on somewhat! iPhone being the case in point! - Paul Fabretti
I don't find Pownce to be slow at all and it's more functional than Jaiku. - Amit Morson
@Bernie I didn't know that about Jaiku. That's really impressive. Twitter seems so lightweight and heavily dependent upon the API developers for innovation. - Dusty Dean
It should really be Jaiku v. Friendfeed, not Jaiku v. Twitter. - Rubin Sfadj
The size and speed of this discussion thread has just made me a convert from Jaiku to Friendfeed. Seriously. - Ben Gracewood
anyone have any invites for jaiku? :) - Tyler Gillies
@Rubin. I think you have something there, although let me throw this in from October last year http://blendingthemix.com/2007... - Paul Fabretti
need jaiku invite? go here to grab: http://kosmar.de/archive... - kosmar
@Ben I agree. It's converting me as well. I had signed up for FF and Social Thing awhile back but had neglected them. - Dusty Dean
Let's start a mass migration over to Pownce (just to check if they go down too on mass usage) - Tapio Liller
@Bernie Goldbach, that was actually pretty nice. But I misread your previous post and thought there were no friends in Jaiku, but dependent on your location... - Fredrik Nordmoen
i have an account on jaiku, but never found it useful because no one i know uses it. so i am still not too familiar with it. when i'm honest, i don't like the UI of friendfeed. i know I'm biased since i work on lifestream.fm, but at the moment, i do believe that none of these lifestreaming services are optimal. we are working to make lifestream what the users want. i have a nice list of what users want, but in the end, i still think most want something clean, simple, useful, and will ultimately use what.. - Jodi Church
friendfeed is the new jaiku now it has channels/rooms - Adrian
..their contacts will use. i don't really think in terms of twitter vs. friendfeed or jaiku vs friendfeed. i prefer to use twitter to communicate. and services like freindfeed are aggregation tools to me with the potential to be more like twitter and beyond. - Jodi Church
@kosmar, thnx for the invite - Tyler Gillies
pownce is really great for sharing and community. lately it has technical problems as well. but i am beginning to think the entire web is broken. it seems all sites i like to use are having technical problems. - Jodi Church
@jodi - agreed. Jaiku=better, but "no" users, Twitter=no features, no realiability, but 1 million users! @Adrian agreed. Could spell the end for Jaiku, although I think Google did that! Methinks they only have it for the mobile client to be used in Adroid! - Paul Fabretti
Ditto bernie on the phone integration stuff. Jaiku Nokia integration is absolutely incredible and has to be used to be believed. If someone (hellloooo Friendfeed) can do something similar with the iPhone SDK, it will be a killer app. - Ben Gracewood
i have 20 invites to jaiku if anyone really wants to try it out - Jodi Church
Jaiku includes a lot of stuff that neither Twitter nor FriendFeed have, principally around mobile phone. Try using it on a Nokia S60, with the client, and you get location awareness - something that's going to be enormous over the next few years. However, I'm sad to say (because I love Jaiku) that I don't think Google will make much of it: according to rumour, apart from its port to Google AppEngine, it's now maintained as a "20% time" project. However, "Jaiku 2.0" may appear, as a feature of Android. - Ian Betteridge
i just want to use jaiku so i have something else to feed friendfeed. - Tyler Gillies
Jaiku may not have been quick enough in building the communities that Twitter and and FF have, but as I've said before what happens if it ships as the default Android address book - http://www.jonathanmulholland.com/2008... ? Would Google Jaiku care about failing to capture the early adopter crowd if they take lifestreaming mass market via Jaiku-Android integration? - Jon Mulholland
Not a fair comparison, Robert. Jaiku has lain fallow since Google bought them. No improvements since then, closed to invite only. It's essentially a dead service. A year ago, when I left Twitter for Jaiku, Jaiku was way ahead. Since then, Twitter has gone nowhere, Jaiku was sold, and Pownce and FF have arisen, and I'm back on Twitter, arguably the least well designed and certainly the least reliable, but ultimately that's where the community is and that's all that matters. - Leo Laporte
@Leo, welcome to the discussion - Tyler Gillies
Leo, check out the response to Robert's comment though. I'd argue that the community is rapidly heading to Friendfeed. I always loved Jaiku's discussion threads attached to each post. Friendfeed has this, and is an order of magnitude faster than Jaiku. - Ben Gracewood
I don't think FF is quite right, either. It's too scattered to feel like a community. A post like this becomes a discussion, but then it's lost in a tsunami of other content. There's way too much going on on FF to feel like a community. That's part of why Twitter works: it's all there in that timeline. (For better or worse). For example, to find this post to comment again I had to go to Twitter. You're promoting it on Twitter. Why? Because that's the best way to find it! What's FF minus Twitter? - Leo Laporte
It's all about the community and the ease of service. Those are key. Twitter's features aren't heavily promoted or easy to understand when you're a new user. It took me several weeks before I discovered the track feature via IM. Truly, it's amazing that Twitter is still growing. It seems that the 'Twitter is down' image with the whale being carried by birds is becoming more of a running joke than something for us to get angry about anymore. We don't have ads (unless you're in Japan). - Dusty Dean
google did a nice job of buying a couch cushion here. i hope that changes with android. - MG Siegler
@Leo, I like the flash mob style of gathering for discussion and then disappearing into the "tsunami of content" it breaks the mold. its new and exciting - Tyler Gillies
In a way Twitter encompasses everything that is strange and unreasonable about the new 'web 2.0' explosion. It hasn't established a solid ad model (unless in you're in Japan), continues to have VC money tossed at it, cannot scale properly,and continues to offer everything for free and asking nothing of its users in return. - Dusty Dean
Microsoft has shown that they are not afraid to pull out their pocketbook and spend some dough acquiring services. Do you think they may have their sights set on Twitter just for the eyeballs? - Dusty Dean
@Leo You gotta be where the people are at. - Michael McGimpsey
Using this FF comments page reminds me of the old HTML chat days where you had to constantly refresh to see new message. - Dusty Dean
@MG Siegler - agreed! - Jon Mulholland
@Dusty If Microsoft got their hands on Twitter then that would be a reason to go to Jaiku - Michael McGimpsey
I totally agree with Leo. Jaiku was seen as a Twitter competitor at first, and lost b/c people like to think that "less is more"; then it was bought out and frozen by Google. Now Friendfeed does the exact same thing, and it's hugely popular not b/c of its UI. It's b/c it's seen as a companion, not a competitor to Twitter. Jaiku never got that chance (or never tried to surf that wave). - Rubin Sfadj
It can't be considered competition to Twitter unless it has SMS. Right now I believe Jaiku is the only one that fits that criteria. SMS is what makes Twitter in many ways - being able to update anywhere. - Jesse Stay
honestly i didn't really start using twitter until i started using friendfeed - Tyler Gillies
i also agree with Leo about FF being too scattered to feel like a community. i think the community (or communities) are still mostly on the services that re being fed into friendfeed. this is not a bad thing at all. but the ability to have some discussion on here is a great option. - Jodi Church
Wow Friendfeed needs to do some UI work on long comment threads. Scrolling up and down to enter comments is lame. - Ben Gracewood
Competitors or not both are community services. And the key of a community service is the community. UI responsiveness is important, but to a lesser extent. Take the example of MySpace, slow, ugly UI, but it has/had success. If Friendfeed were simply cool & quick, but nobody replied to your messages, would you still post here Scoble? - funkyboy
Whats wrong with the UI Robert? Its a decent UI. And your initial argument over a year ago was that Jaiku was too complicated and you prefered the simplicity of Twitter. What has changed for you to now love FriendFeed? Because it is doing *nothing* new and a whole lot less than Jaiku did. Channels? Yep. Hiding feeds? Yep. Threaded conversations? Yep. And then there was the killer S60 integration. But alas, the service is dead now. Look for the reincarnation in Android. - Jamie
"although you might argue that Jaiku layout was the insipiration for Apple's threaded SMS conversations on the iPhone!" - I think you will find iChat (2003) was the inspiration for the SMS UI on the iPhone. - Jamie
@Jamie and regarding UI: how do you like the awesome Friendfeed UI? Scroll to the top of this page to hit "comment". LOL - Ben Gracewood
@nzben I get the comment link just below the original post. Not ideal from a UI POV, but not terrible - James Marwood
Does it stay up though? Can u tell I am twit-jaded? - Kamath (नमः) from twhirl
I need an invite for jaiku. My email address is codesurgeon AT gmail DOT com - Mustafa K. Isik
i think the problem is that friendfeed didn't think that this many people would comment on a single 2 line message - Tyler Gillies
the third screen is the battlefield. - kosmar
Have 20 invites for Jaiku if anybody is interested - I only use Jaiku for my Danish followers - Otherwise I only use FF or Twitter. - Christian Bogh
Let's wait until the guys at Google release a new version and see how it will integrate with other Google services - João Almeida from twhirl
I think Jaiku will be integrated in Google Reader soon. - Svartling
I'd love a Jaiku invite if anybody has one. - David Owens
To everyone Looking for a Jaiku Invite go visit http://JaikuInvites.com - Ciaran Rooney
Jaiku in GReader seems a pretty neat idea - João Almeida from twhirl
I don't like all the feeds that I have to manually unsubscribe to one-by-one on Jaiku. It's all a bit to much in one place. - Jamie Clark
Jaiku is simply not open to the public - if they don´t open up soon, they will loose the race anyway! - Dieter Schwarz from twhirl
I prefer the interface of Jaiku to Twitter. The problem is that Jaiku has no audience. Jaiku is like a nice looking bar that none of my friends patronize. It still looks like a nice place, but not much fun happens there. - Phil Yanov
I think the reason is... SXSW. Hype. The fact that it has become the verb for the microblogging movement. I'm trying to get a jaiku invite, maybe it not being open yet has something to do with it. - Evan Travers
@Phil, good analogy - Tyler Gillies
Maybe it's a European dimension but I can update both Jaiku and Twitter via SMS. I get my Jaiku flow through text updates, something Twitter cannot provide so I'm stuck missing conversations during episodes of missing histories. Like an absent-minded bar maid, Twitter is there when I saunter by. But in the meantime, I've got dozens of friends, real and virtual, on Jaiku who converse in a threaded way. That's helpful for me, but I can see where some people want the craic of the A-List noise on Twitter. - Bernie Goldbach
Jaiku isn't a Twitter competitor. Twitter strives to be a microblog *only*. Jaiku wants to be much more than that - and, frankly, doesn't deliver. It doesn't like the feed of one of my blogs (and f-yeah, using Feedburner!), the comment system is not as developed as FriendFeed...Pownce IMHO is a better microblogging-plus-some-lifestreaming solution... but hey Bret and Paul, add some microblogging features to FriendFeed! - Cesar Cardoso
I prefer Jaiku to Twitter in every way but one. The people I want to follow are on Twitter. So there you go. - CJ
I you want to beat the friendly UI with the sickly back end... you can't have a sickly UI AND a sickly back end. - Nancy Babyak
Pounce is interesting but seems to attract a much younger crowd then twitter. It does have an import friend feature, first 100, and while everyone I followed on twitter was there, only about 5% had actually posted. Pounce does show your age by default. I felt old, but then found the area to hide your profile. I still like twitter the best. Twitter makes me feel more comfortable for some reason. - Maxine Appleby from Alert Thingy
FF has some serious work to do re: commenting. It's functionally broken with this many comments. Essentially it's the Fun Wall on Facebook. - Rick Powell
Since Jaiku is closed to invites and FriendFeed is open and still has only a % of the users of Twitter, it seems that the answer is obvious as most say. It isn't about technology but people. I'd rather meet all my friends at a dive than try to look cool at a members only club most days. I'd agree with Leo that Twitter/Friendfeed together makes the most sense. - Jay Gilmore
I've been waiting for an invite for months, that might have something to do with it. - Cyndy
someone above mentioned it already but with so many comments, it's worth repeating - for jaiku invites, see http://JaikuInvites.com. I got my invite within an hour of my request. - acedanger
jaiku reminds me of a basterdized version of twitter and friendfeed - Greg North
I have a few invites. Add me to your Friendfeed (I'll add you in return) and let me know how to get that invite to you. - Mike Lewis
Just to remind everyone the Jaiku was around BEFORE twitter and long before friendfeed, It has the best feature set and the best mobile access. Twitter and FriendFeed are all about the people A-listers like Scoble. Jaiku is about real community not noise. - Ciaran Rooney
@scoble : I don't find it that slow or ugly, maybe a little bit confusing and not as simple as twitter but it does the job - directeur
In my experience, Jaiku has not been slow. I use its mobile interface when I'm outside if Twitter is down. - Morton Fox
@acedanger: Thanks for posting that link. Was wondering when someone was going to do it (I was about to!). :) - Cheryl Jones
Jaiku is a bit harder to get into as far as finding interesting conversations, which is bad for the typical impatient Net users (many of which I've seen in this thread). But it rewards patient users who find interesting people to follow. I feel like the presence of conversation threads makes interaction a lot more fulfilling. This is also why FriendFeed is good, because of threaded conversations. - Cheryl Jones
Also there are so many spammer! - SteJules from twhirl
Who needs Jaiku when you have FriendFeed? - Thomas Hawk
Jaiku may be slow, but not as slow as Pownce! - Mack D. Male
Jaiku's problem is that it's most powerful feature is limited to Nokia phones. Everyone doesn't have a Nokia, therefore it gets missed. I've also said that Jaiku's implementation of comments is not as seamless as FriendFeed's. It requires an extra page load/extra step, where it's MUCH easier to join the conversation in FriendFeed. And finally, the community. Jaiku's community is not is vibrant as Twitter or FriendFeed. That is the biggest issue in my opinion. - Bwana ☠
Personally I really like Jaiku - albeit it's similar to Friendfeed. I like the fact that Google is running it - so i expect support would be far better than FF or Twitter. It has sms which is lacking FF (and twitter doesn't work on my current phone, support is non-existant). I also like their rooms better since they have a better directory listing and it's more reminiscent of the irc for me. The thing that's lacking is the community, btw i'm pbrush on jaiku. - Doug Brooks
none of my friends are on Twitter, Jaiku, FF, so for me the all suck as social networks. I use Twitter for status sync with Pulse (my business contacts are on there) and Hyves (my friends are there). Jaiku Pownce Numpa (dutch) aren't interesting to me. I use FF to subscribe to people like Robert and use it as a sort of Feed reader, but instead for blogs it's for people... - Mark Jenniskens
What this conversation needs is a greasemonkey script that does a few search and replace manoeuvres: .replace('Twitter', 'Ford').replace('Jaiku', 'Chevy').replace('Google', 'GM').replace('FF', 'Ford Fiesta'); - Micah Wittman
If you don't like the look - just change it ;) I've just started work on a stylish extension for it and it's easy to strip out the bits you don't like. Besides, I'm more often interfacing with it through google talk, so then it's just a message. - Alex Leonard
Oh, and the other thing I wanted to mention is that I've connected with an excellent community of web developers on Jaiku and often find it an excellent place to post questions to with excellent results. - Alex Leonard
Is there a client like twhirl for jaiku? - blacktulip from twhirl
For those of you who dumped your Twitter and blog feeds into Jaiku and don't actually post there, you're missing the point. RSS feed dumping don't equal interaction. Once you get into conversations with people (as with FF), that's when you'll see Jaiku shine. - Cheryl Jones
Jaiku has better taste with Jaikungfu http://jonas.lemonad.org/arkiv... - A.T.
I think that the fact it's invitations only killed it. Even Google can't help them in this stage. It should have been integrated to some of their applications long time ago. - Orli Yakuel
Jaiku is by far a superior service than Twitter, truly conversational messaging, great group discussion (before FF) ,deep mobile integration, reliable (most of the time) and is build on a good architecture design. The main problem of Jaiku is now Google and the number of users currently using the service. - israel
I used Jaiku before Google bought it and it was quite boring, No one to follow or post to, and no apps as FriendFeed and Twitter have amassed. - Randy
If Google doesn't open it, it will never be a *real* competitor to Twitter! I think if Pownce adds phone alerts, it could take Twitter down! - Josué Almeida
IMO the true story of Jaiku stays untold... my impression that it had been done "on purpose", i.e. relatively cheap data collection of big size covered as interaction social service, to be sold later to GOOG :) mission accomplished, now on freeze/invitations-only :) - A.T.
i think the UI of jaiku is kinda sexy - Tyler Gillies
jaiku needs more features ;-) - Google Reader
@z3ux I seem to get a lot of spamvites from Pownce, which is kinda sad - Wil
Jaiku was experiencing some load issues couple of hours ago... which is quite unusual for a Google service. - Wil
@leolaporte I am genuinely interested. search may be an issue sometime, but Twitter seems pretty scattered as well doesn't it? - Ken Stewart | ChangeForge
Hey guys, Jaiku noticed this convo and blogged about it: http://www.jaiku.com/blog... - Voyagerfan5761
Even Kevin Rose (founded pownce) uses twitter a lot, he says fundamental difference is that twitter is for communication, pownce is for sharing media...that is the difference in his mind. Idea: what if twitter merged with friendfeed and migrated over twitters to a stable, reliable ff w/ sms!!! - Pokai
I was just forwarded a Jaiku invite yesterday and have been playing with it. To evaluate Jaiku, you need to analyze (1) the application (2) the third party offerings, and (3) the robustness of the community. So far I'm actually impressed with (1). As FriendFeed users will testify, conversations organized around an item are nice. - Ontario Emperor
i like the jaiku UI - Tyler Gillies
Any reason why a proven IM systems couldn't just add opt-in microblogging and commenting features? Seems like iChat, Jabber, AIM, etc. would bring more users into a Twitter-like world than Twitter can scale to an IM world. - Kawika Holbrook
wow! lots of opinions. Jaiku is dead because it's closed. It never was bigger than Twitter because alot of the a-listers (like it or not) did not use it as a primary communication channel except Leo Laporte. Jaiku is more a direct competitor of Friendfeed (both are lifestreams). Also I hated the tools to post on Jaiku. Twitteriffic was way better. Jaiku's wworst enemy is Google. Why do they shut things off when they buy them. IT IS PLAIN F*#%ing stupid. when will they learn? - DC Crowley
@DC Crowley. So what would you do after acquiring a company? Would you ask the team to deal with the rapid increase in usage (caused by the publicity around the acquisition) whilst also trying to integrate into a new company/technology platform? Or would you just leave everything the same and end up with dozens of little groups using radically different technologies? I also find it interesting and somewhat sad that you think the micro-celebs of the blogging world are the only people who matter. - Adewale Oshineye
twitter, jaiku, pownce, facebook, friendfeed..........information overload...... - Thomas Chai