Twitter v. Jaiku - a conversation on Friendfeed

I really like the interface and even the promise of Jaiku, but it seems to be getting no traction at all. Twitter, and now Friendfeed, are sucking all of the air out of the room. This week, Robert Scoble asked Why Jaiku is not more popular. The conversation is on Friendfeed.


On Friendfeed, via Scoble: Jaiku v. Twitter Smackdown

Twitter + Spamtachments = Pownce

To: Pownce
From: Web 2.0 Users

It Would Be So Nice If You Weren't Here...(thanks Charles Grodin)

The irreverent uncov reminds us that Pownce is still alive, even if only barely. I might not have bothered mentioning the rather mundane continued existence of this particular Twitter clone, but Pownce isn't just a Twitter clone. It's an annoying Twitter clone. Think of Danny DeVito v. Arnold Schwarzenegger in the movie Twins.

While I might Twitter or even Jaiku to my pals, I swore off Pownce because I kept getting useless links to attachments, pictures, videos, and other unwanted interruptions. Since they were unwanted, I deemed them spam. (Even my friends can spam me.) I thought that I might be outside of their target demographic and too remote from the "in crowd" to understand why some people might want this. It appears that I wasn't the only one who didn't get Pownce. At TechCrunch, Arrington muses that Pownce may be a dead pool candidate.

uncov's clever chart says that Pownce is beyond even the resuscitory powers of power blogger Arrington. The compete chart below suggests nothing different. I tossed in Jaiku's traffic for comparison. Even though Jaiku's traffic may be in the dumpster with Pownce, they can never die as the eternally revitalizing blood of Google now runs in their veins.

Google buys Jaiku -- you can stop Twittering now.

Jaiku has been snapped up by Google. Here is what Jaiku has to day about it:

Exciting news: Google has bought Jaiku today.

What does that mean? First and foremost, we’re of course continuing to support our existing users. So fear not: your Jaiku phone, the Web site, IM, SMS, and API will continue to work normally.

That said, new user sign-ups have been limited for the time being. The idea here is to enable our team to get right to work with Google’s engineers on delivering a new, better service to you as quickly as we can instead of spending our efforts on optimizing the current back-end. Existing users will still be able to invite their friends, and those who are not yet on Jaiku can send us a request for an invitation to join.

Jaiku is a presence sharing service that shares activity information via the web and mobile phones. I can, for example using SMS, a web app on my Blackberry, or the Jaiku website.

What I have liked about Jaiku is that they expanded the platform with features like replies pretty early on. They also allow you to dress up your messages with icons, and have allowed you to aggregate other feeds so people could basically stay in touch with you. Jaiku is flexible and offers more features for more types of users without actually cluttering up the interface or impeding usability. That's a bit of elegance that seems to have eluded Twitter. Just this week I was enjoying Jaiku and at the same time wondering how they intended to make money with it. My curiosity was borne out of the fact that I like the service and was afraid it might go away if they didn't come up with a revenue stream. The Google purchase lets me know that they figured out how to make money and that both parties intend for the service to last longer than a fad.