Jaiku vs Twitter – the revenge (UPDATED)

By paul.fabretti / October 9, 2007 / Uncategorized / 4 Comments

So Google’s purchase of Jaiku has happened and I am delighted.

It is a bit of the VHS versus Betamax battle – but where the better format wins!

Jaiku is a much more accomplished, micro-blogging tool. It offers post comments/threads, groups, post/comment rss feed, external feed importing, embedable post icons, groups and fantastic mobile functionality (there’s probably a load more too!).

The one thing it has always lacked is a vast user-base, which Twitter has in abundance. Yet Twitter has almost NO functionality other than erm…search and rss.

As a predominantly mobile application, with a larger customer base, one can’t help wonder why Google hasn’t bought Twitter instead (to go with the Gphone no doubt!)

I sincerely hope that Google’s purchase of Jaiku really opens the application up to the users it deserves – it is significantly better than Twitter and the more users it gets, the better.

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Update: The irony of Robert launching a conversation about Jaiku on Twitter was not lost on me, nor was the use of Friendfeed to carry out the conversation ;-) . Robert used FF to discuss why Jaiku has not taken off as a Micro-blogging tool, when the always-down and featureless Twitter remains so popular.

The discussion ranges from “horrible green colour” to “closed network” (but surely on this basis, any network that requires a login is closed?” but I see so many compelling reasons FOR Jaiku, namely and not exclusive to:

Fantastic mobile client
Location-awareness
Groups
Feeds (image and text)
Great UI (for threaded conversations)

As I suggested earlier this week, FF’s room feature may in fact spell the end for Jaiku (although many would argue that Google was the end for them!) but the direction of the conversation is absolutely turning towards FF as the bridge between the gap.

Twitter = Frequently down, featureless, massive user base
Jaiku = Occasionally slow, feature-rich, few users
Friendfeed = Always-up, good speed, growing (quickly) community, feature-rich

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  • http://uk.intruders.tv/ vincent

    You can watch an interview of Biz Stone co-founder of twitter http://uk.intruders.tv/Interview-with-Twitter-co-founder-Biz-Stone_a133.html

    and an interview of Jyri Engestrom co-founder of Jaiku
    http://uk.intruders.tv/Essential-Web-07-Interview-with-Jaiku-co-founder-Jyri-Engestrom_a98.html

  • http://blendingthemix.com Paul

    Thanks Vincent. That’s twice now that you guys have the video to the latest scoop! The Arrington/Zuckerberg video was great!

  • http://blog.willmcinnes.co.uk Will McInnes

    If you’re saying that Jaiku is better than Twitter because it’s more feature rich, and better looking, than I wholeheartedly disagree with you.

    Good web apps are lean.

    If you look at the evolution of classical traditional software apps, they’ve suffered immensely from gradually becoming huge bloated pieces of software – MS Word, for example.

    Abundance of features does not equal better.

  • http://blendingthemix.com paul.fabretti

    Hi Will

    I absolutely agree with you on the best apps being lean.

    Google docs are a great example of how you can take essential features from a complex application (like MS Word) and still make it work perfectly well (and as such transport it to other delivery media), but in the case of Jaiku and Twitter there is a fundamental benefit to Jaiku.

    The beauty of Jaiku though is that it allows conversations to take place under a single 140-character statement. Conversations flow, people join in. Just like blogs.

    Take that mobile (with the S60 client as well as SMS, like Twitter) and you have an awesome combination of mobile micro-blogging (threaded conversations stemming from a single statement) and life-streaming (140 character updates).

    To respond direcdtly to your comment, I agree, more is not always best, but in this case, I still strongly believe that Jaiku does a vastly better job than Twitter.

    :-)