Oh my. Google has purchased Jaiku and word on the street is that it plans on integrating it with it's new release of Orkut in early November. And just when we thought that Google wasn't paying attention in the socnet space!
It's interesting, because for me, Jaiku was always second best to Twitter. And for that matter, Orkut was always second best to MySpace (or make that third-best). But I'm glad to see that Google is paying attention and doing it well.
Jaiku is a smart app, and I was reminded of that this morning when I signed in after months of abandonment. The thing is, I hadn't actually abandoned Jaiku because long ago I had set it up to automatically post my blog rants and flickr photos. So even though I forgot to actually GO TO the site, I was still connected to it and it was still very relevant and up-to-date.
That's not just smart, it's crazy Web 2.0 smart.
Hi Laura,
ReplyDeleteI wondered why Google bought Jaiku and not Twitter, that is until I took a closer look at Jaiku. To me it's much more aesthetic and has more functionality. I like how you can add Flickr et. all to your Jaiku page and add little icons so you know which updates are coming from Twitter or Flickr and so on. I also like the channels feature. However, I think microblogging is still in early stages and can become a lot more useful as new uses of these tools are invented. I too am anticipating what Google can come up with. Do you think Orkut has a chance at chipping at Facebook's popularity?