Why Jaiku, not Twitter was bought by Google (IMO)

The sphere is aglow with the news of Google’s acquisition today of Jaiku, the microblogging service from Finland. Opinions are flying everywhere, as you’d expect when an announcement of this potential magnitude is made, and there’s a tremendous amount of both good and not-so-good thinking being displayed about the why and wherefore behind Google’s decision to go with Jaiku rather than Twitter. In my opinion, it comes down to two things: mobile and aggregation.

Jaiku, developed by ex-Nokians in Finland, has always had a leg up on Twitter in the mobile world. All the fancy iPhone pages out there that provide a streamlined Twitter experience – nice though they may be – simply don’t amount to much when compared to the native Symbian S60 client that’s available for Jaiku and how well it integrates with (or replaces) the built-in contacts manager on that platform. The Symbian client provides presence indications for all of your contacts on Jaiku and displays your presence to them. The Jaiku mobile application is a framework I expect to see replicated on other mobile platforms sooner rather than later (think Palm OS and Windows Mobile) and Google has the resources to make that initiative a priority.

This presence feature, also available in the web version of Jaiku, is well-aligned with Google’s low-key efforts at instituting a similar feature in Gmail and Google Talk. Add Jaiku into the mix and consider the ability to add posts to Jaiku into the conversation stream already shared between Gmail and Google Talk and you see a big picture emerging. Or at least I do. And it’s becoming clear as the rumor mill on the “G-Phone” continues to crank that an OS play may be in the works. Jaiku’s client design builds a strong value add to a Google Mobile OS if such a thing is actually in development.

The other attraction Jaiku had for Google, I believe, is the ease with which the service consumes and aggregates web services and feeds. Some of my developer friends argue that Twitter’s API is “better” than Jaiku’s. That may be true on a technical level – I’m not a developer and can’t really say. What I can say, from an end-user perspective, is that Jaiku makes it drop-dead simple for me to include feeds from my blogs, Flickr images, and other social nets into my “lifestream”. And that’s got a lot of attraction for the world’s biggest search engine because all of those feeds, in context to each other and across the network of connections established by linking up with other Jaiku-ers, provides some great metadata.

What will become of Twitter? That remains to be seen. Will they look for a buyer or continue to work their recently acquired investment capital and remain autonomous? Hard to say – the company has always been rather close-mouthed about their plans. There are so many folks on Twitter and so many extensions to the core service that have been built using its API that I don’t think there’s any reason to think that Google’s acquisition of a competitor puts them in an y immediate peril.

In fact, there’s a bit of predictable emotional backlash in the Twitter stream right now. Some wonder whether Twitter was approached first and spurned Google’s advances (possible). Othersopine that given Google’s lack of success with social networks to date (Orkut and Dodgeball are cited in every one of these posts), that there’s no evidence to suggest they’ll do better this time.

I think that’s wishful thinking on the part of the Twitter faithful. But then again… we’re still waiting for JotSpot to reemerge from the Plex so wait and see seems to be the wisest course of action. Me? I’ll continue to use both services as each ads substantial value to my connectedness. The big loser in all of this is Pownce.

Kevin Rose’s attempt to break into the lifestream space has always been a distant third in my attention sphere. I get spammed for connections on that service more than either Twitter or Jaiku. And it doesn’t solve a problem that hasn’t already been addressed by the other two. I predict it will become a stomping ground for the Digg crowd and not much else. That’s too bad because Pownce has a number of unique features. But I don’t see room for three big players in this space and most of the folks I tend to follow or am being followed by on Twitter and Jaiku seem to have similar feelings.

Whatever else it may be, today’s announcement sure got a lot of people talking and a lot of interest in Jaiku ignited (or reignited). If you’d like an invite to Jaiku (currently closed to new signups but not invites), leave a comment with your e-mail address is suitably bot-proof form or send me an e-mail at marc[dot]orchant[at]blognation[dot]com and I’ll shoot one your way. First ten requests get ‘em.

Check out other blognation coverage here and here and here.

Update: Ben Metcalfe asks a very good question: Did Jaiku just become a sacrificial victim for the GPhone?

Update 2: Chris Messina nails it in a great post this morning in which he writes:

What Google keeps getting closer to with first its acquisition of Dodgeball a year ago and now Jaiku is the socialization of presence. That’s what it’s all about. That’s how they’ll increase the relevance of their ads in situ. That’s how they’ll improve the quality of their services (like Google Maps). Tim O’Reilly has for some time called for the development of the Web 2.0 Address Book. I think belying that assertion is the fact that more people need to get in the habit and mindset of maintaining their online selves — thereby making their status — or presence — more widely known and available.

Update 3: The Jaiku invites are gone. Congrats to those who responded – hope you find the service useful. It doesn’t look like Google/Jaiku are replenishing the invites right now.