Google Buys Jaiku

Great news for Jyri and Petteri and the Jaiku team - Google has just bought the company. This is so well deserved - the Jaikus have been working so hard and have created a superior product. Google already owns Dodgeball - but Jaiku has so many additional cool features. I presume this means a native Jaiku client on the GPhone? And you can continue to follow me on Jaiku at chieftwit.jaiku.com.

Goodbye Twitter. Hello Jaiku.

When I talk about Twitter people think I'm crazy. Who would want to be bugged by hundreds of messages a day from your friends telling you what they're up to. Well, as it turns out, lots of us would. Twitter is positively addictive and everyone, including Mike Arrington at Techcrunch, seems to think it's going to be the next big thing. I'm really happy for Ev and the gang at Obvious. Ev jumpstarted the blogging revolution and tried to do the same with podcasting until Apple jumped into the ring and squashed all the competition. Twitter is his well deserved second home run.

But I'm leaving it.

The problem is the name. I wish to heck he'd named it Tweeter, or Tooter, or anything but Twitter. Twitter is so close to TWiT that I'm afraid it's really confusing. And it hasn't helped the confusion that I've been such a fan of Twitter. I'm sure half the people there think we have some sort of relationship. But we don't. And the proliferation of programs like Twitbox and sites like Twit This are not helping things much. So let me repeat...

Twitter has nothing to do with TWiT.

And, I'm afraid, I can't have anything to do with Twitter, either. It's just fueling the confusion. Fortunately, there are several similar services including Groovr, Dodgeball, and Jaiku. After a cursory glance at all three Jaiku seems to have the best mix of features for me (I'm too old to be groovy, or hooking up) so I'm moving to Jaiku. (In truth, it offers a much richer set of features than Twitter.) My handle is ChiefTWiT. Hope to see some of you there.

And I hope my Twitter friends will consider creating a Jaiku account and adding your Twitter feeds to it so I can still see what you're up to. If you do, please make sure to let me know!

(Of course the Jaiku server crashed the minute I mentioned that on Twitter. Twitter's powerful stuff. I'm gonna miss the mojo.)

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