Jaiku Archive

Danny Sullivan is reporting that Google is closing a number of services including Dodgeball and Jaiku. Google acquired Jaiku in late 2007 and noted at that time, "Activity streams and mobile presence are important areas where we believe Google can add a lot of value for users. Jaiku’s technology and talented team are a great addition to Google’s current application and mobile teams."

Google hasn’t seemed to move Jaiku forward since their acquisition. I’ve never really used Dodgeball so I can’t comment on that side. Google lost a great opportunity for activity streaming with Jaiku.

The other big announcement is that within a few months you won’t be able to upload any videos to Google Video. In their blog post announcing the change, they note that current videos will still live on Google Video. I’ve wondered why they have kept Google Video around this long. My bet is by the end of the summer, those videos will be moved to YouTube.

I am wondering if GrandCentral will be next to go. There has been basically no activity on the service since Google took over and I’ve noticed several technical issues that have seemed to go unresolved. They haven’t opened the service to the public and they removed all invites as well. I really hope GrandCentral isn’t next – it’s a great service that has potential in the telephony market. (if it does close, I want the domain name!)

Mashable first reported that Google would acquire Jaiku today. It has since been confirmed on the Jaiku blog. Of course with the continued GOOG stock increases, did they even feel the hit?

Sean wonders why they didn’t acquire twitter. I know why. Because Twitter shows an out-of-service bird more than it should.

From the acquisition faq:

Q: Why did Google acquire Jaiku?

A: Activity streams and mobile presence are important areas where we believe Google can add a lot of value for users. Jaiku’s technology and talented team are a great addition to Google’s current application and mobile teams.

While the chatter yesterday was around Twitter’s text advertising, clearly Jaiku is made for Adwords integration. Congrats to the Helsinki, Finland Jaiku team!

Helsinki-based Jaiku is announcing this morning the launch of an instant messaging client. Jaiku is similar to Twitter in that they are both "CMPs", that is Conversational Microblogging Platforms. The new IM client works with Jabber-based tools such as Gtalk.

Conversational microblogging is certainly heating up. Twitter is working with MTV, Jaiku is innovating with feeds from friends, Pownce is, well, powncing, and Yappd is working with images as their form of differentiation.

Jaiku claims they are "the leading conversational microblogging platform that enables users to post thoughts and ideas from web and mobile applications, and comment on posts of business associates, friends, and family. The free service offers the use of personality icons, the ability to share your lifestream (webfeeds from Flickr, Del.icio.us, Google, Last FM and blogs), and connectivity 24/7 from mobile and handheld devices."

I don't understand why they request a 3am Eastern embargo when the site is down!