Another dodgeball it seems.
When Google snapped up Jaiku, the first thing they did was to stop sign-ups to the service. Over time the service with Jaiku has gotten worse and worse with no new iterations at all. You can see from various messages that the Jaiku boys are working hard and learning loads but it has been ruminated that Jaiku was purchased for the brains and not the service. A recent comment from one of their people in the Jaiku Dev channels seems to suggest that it’s true and Google is just letting them tank:
we’re pretty much at the end of our rope as far as scaling goes, i’ve been in discussions internally as to where to proceed but things go slowly, and it seems like any path forward requires radical architecture/database restructuring
it’s a lot of work and there are some major pieces of the process that i am unable to do on my own but i’m trudging along, just feels like it isn’t going quickly enough 🙁
Jaiku has a strong community and a nice feel to it and while people can still sign up via invites most of the public still won’t avail that way. Anyway, I left this week as the service is really awful and there is no fresh blood and am sure many more feel the same. Their blog has been dead too since they were purchased. It’s understandable in a way that Google would get these guys sooner rather an expensive later but jeez, why let it die? Just so Yahoo! or Microsoft could not build it out?
As proven in the acquisitions sector, the fastest way of getting talent is to buy the whole house.
Makes me think again how much more appealing acquisition by Yahoo! would be compared to acquisition by Google.
*Cough* Well, its good to think these things through. Beforehand. Just in case, like.
[…] Mulley updates us with “Google kills Jaiku…another dodgeball it […]
So, what do you think the replacement to Jaiku will be? I’ve to be a big fan of it and don’t think I’d be content on Twitter.
I do wonder. There is definitely an opportunity there now.
Conor mentioned Pownce (half-jokingly) a few days back as an alternative – maybe he was showing off that he had lots of invites 🙂 The posting of feeds into ones Jaiku stream was a neat feature that I’d just started to use so I can see where Pownce might fit in – at least from the front page pitch.
While there is an opportunity, I’d be wary of [doing] a Jaiku clone appealing as it would seem.
the current state of jaiku does disappoint me a little – but i still use it every day – i still have it running on my phone every single day, my friends here (helsinki) use it every day – i name all the cells the app goes near in places that i frequent. thats the thing here that will keep me from leaving jaiku – the location feature. the app is just fantastic beyond belief. its that technology that will end up no doubt in some future address book app in android.
but as a friend said, the last three months doesnt concern me that much, its what happens over the next three months (after the team have settled into moving to san fran / london and gotten over the disruption of xmas / new years). im probably cutting them some slack though – ive been using it now for 18months.
to be honest i dont think the service has degraded to such a level that would warrant it being described as “really awful”.
[…] I’ve just about closed shop on Jaiku. Just like Damien, the instability of the site, feed overkill and sameness of the banter has strangled any love I […]
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[…] even if you are not subbed to them. Jaiku used to be the alternative and a competitor but now that Google pretty much killed that off, Twitter is doing very well. I actually think the lack of functions for it are a good […]
[…] was in response to a post detailing Jaiku’s apparent abandonment within google: Jaiku has a strong community and a nice feel to it and while people can still sign […]