The Inquisitr » Jaiku

Jaiku To Live On: Open Sourced on Google App Engine

Duncan Riley — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 04:56:33 +0000

Despite earlier reports that the Google owned microblogging platform Jaiku was to completely close, a new post from Google confirms that the service will live on, sort of.

From the post, Jaiku will be ported to the Google App Engine then open sourced, allowing anyone to grab the code and use it for their own service.

Google isn’t clear though on the existing service: a port to Google Apps may disrupt the current service, and Google doesn’t specifically say that existing users will continue to be supported. Instead they say that “Google will no longer actively develop the Jaiku codebase, the service itself will live on thanks to a dedicated and passionate volunteer team of Googlers,” what ever that means.

Here’s the money quote from the post

With the open source Jaiku Engine project, organizations, groups and individuals will be able to roll-their-own microblogging services and deploy them on Google App Engine. The new Jaiku Engine will include support for OAuth, and we’re excited about developers using this proven code as a starting point in creating a freely available and federated, open source microblogging platform.

Either way, they still killed one of the most promising microblogging platforms. For more on the Google Massacre, read here.

Google Massacre: Google Closes Jaiku, Dodgeball, Notebook, Catalog Search; Google Video Downgraded

Duncan Riley — Thu, 15 Jan 2009 03:29:24 +0000

Google has made an unprecedented number of service cuts today as the company continues to reduce development and running costs in the difficult economic environment.

The cuts include the closure of microblogging platform Jaiku, mobile location service Dodgeball, Google Catalog search, and Google Notebook. Notebook though will be kept online, but with all development stopped and the browser extension no longer supported.

Google Video will also be downgraded, with users no longer able to upload video to the service, being forced to use YouTube instead.

The cut to Jaiku puts what was once a promising platform out of its misery. Since acquiring Jaiku, Google has all but ignored the service, culminating in a weekend long and seemingly unnoticed downtime in August. See our previous coverage here.

Dodgeball was a service that led the field in geolocation based social networking in a time before GPS made it easier to use, and more appealing. Notably at the time they acquired it, a Google spokesman said that “and (we) don’t have any announced plans for it.” Dodgeball’s founders left Goolge in April 2008, citing a lack of development support.

Google Notebook was an early entrant into web based notebooks that like the broader space didn’t really take off. It was a useful product, but not as easy to use as say a notebook on the computer you were on at the time, and likewise if you needed to take longer notes, Google Docs is a better choice, which is exactly one alternative Google has suggested in its post about Notebook ceasing development. Users will retain full access to Notebook online for the foreseeable future, but support for the browser extension is being dropped.

Google Catalog Search was a strange service that offered something like Google Book Search but for catalogs; I’m yet to meet anyone who has used it.

Last, Google Video, Google’s original foray into online video before it acquired YouTube is switching off uploads; videos currently uploaded to the service will remain. No word yet as to whether YouTube will now accept video longer than 10 minutes, one of Google Video’s still strong selling points today.

UPDATE: suggestions are that Jaiku won’t be completely shut, but open sourced and supported by volunteers. Post to follow.

Jaiku rises from the dead, but is it too late?

Duncan Riley — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 08:06:08 +0000

The Google owned microblogging service Jaiku is back after an extended weekend outage, and a year of epic fails on the social side, having blocked new signups since it was acquired.

There’s no dramatic change evident on the site, although there was reports that Jaiku was switching to Google Gears. The noticeable difference is that new users are able to sign up to Jaiku via unlimited invites from existing users, but it’s not exactly open and free yet.

Jaiku showed a lot of promise early on, often billed as Twitter’s chief competitor, but is now cited as yet another example of how Google kills acquisitions, particularly when the buy was IP related as opposed to user base. Jaiku today still has many of its original appealing features: the ability to life stream content, nice interface and a multimedia environment, but what was great before is now nearly commonplace is a sea of Twitter wannabes.

(via VentureBeat)

Jaiku

Four ways Google could destroy Digg

Duncan Riley — Wed, 23 Jul 2008 00:40:23 +0000

With news that Google is alleged once again to be close to acquiring Digg, some may suggest that the future of the popular social voting destination is assured. But looking at Google’s list of acquisitions, it is anything but. Here’s four ways Google could destroy Digg as we currently know it.

Stagnation

While Digg is a popular service is its current form, any site that doesn’t evolve over time to keep the interaction fresh risks losing favor, particularly in a competitive space. Feedburner was acquired by Google for $100 million in June 2007, and the notice of the acquisition is still sitting on the front page. In over 12 months nothing much at all has changed at Feedburner, with the exception of some users getting to display Adsense ads in their feed. No Google login integration, no fresh services, nothing much at all really. Feeburner has one advantage: a near monopoly in third party feed support, and many of us use it by default, and that’s the only reason it hasn’t blead users post Google. Feedburner also proves that the price of the acquisition doesn’t matter in Google pergatory, so despite a rumored $200 million price tag, Digg could easily suffer the same fate.

Unloved

Jaiku was acquired by Google in October 2007 and since that time has remained unloved with no promotion or even reasonable support. When microblogging first came of age last year Jaiku was talked about as the No 2 in the space after Twitter, today, outside of a core few users, few use it, and even if you wanted to use it, they stopped accepting signups post Google acquisition. Not long ago it went down for a couple of days, and there were so few people left using it that hardly anyone noticed. It was rumored that Jaiku was acquired for the IP to be used in Google’s mobile endeavors, but we haven’t seen anything in that regard either. Microblogging would seem to be a natural service for Google to be in, and yet as more and more services enter the space, Google sits and does nothing with a platform that would have been booming if it hadn’t been acquired. The Digg lesson is that companies acquired by Google can be ignored and even forgotten. There is one thing for sure: Digg will never get the same amount of attention in Google as it gets now.

Ignoring existing customers

Google acquired Urchin in March 2005 and used the software as the basis for Google Analytics, the problem is that it then ignored Urchin’s existing user base for years. Urchin offered an installed, paid analytics package that was fairly popular when acquired, and a new version was actually in testing at the time of acquisition. Over 2 years later that software was released, and only then after some strong criticism. The Digg lesson is that Google loves IP, but doesn’t always appreciate existing user bases. Imagine if Google decides to use the Digg engine to power a Google service (and the rumors have Google News in the spotlight), but then completely ignores Digg.com.

Spam trap

One of Google’s earliest acquisitions was Pyra Labs, the company behind the Blogger hosted blogging service. Keeping spam off blogs has always been a battle, but in the early days it was an issue actively addressed by the Pyra Labs team. Post Google acquisition, Blogger quickly became the favorite service of spammers worldwide, in part driven by a belief that as a Google owned service, links on Blogger blogs are indexed more quickly and have more validity. Google has made the occasion noise about spam on Blogger, but the service is still one of the largest repositories of spam online, and the volume has never really decreased. The Digg lesson is that any acquisition by Google will bring attention to Digg, that may result in even more spam (the service is already a target, but they do a pretty good job in dealing with) and that Google may do nothing to address any future spam issues.

Conclusion

With a $200 million price tag you’d think that Google would look after Digg post acquisition, but as the four examples shown demonstrate, Google inaction in price agnostic. The most successful acquisitions Google have made nearly all included merging the acquired company into Google products, or using them to launch new Google products (and in both cases the original brand ceaseing to exist). The exceptions: Blogger, the favorite destination for spam worldwide, and YouTube, which Google is struggling to make money from. Grand Central is a maybe, but even that has had issues post Google acquisition.

Digg

Posty: All-in-one AIR App for Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, Tumblr and Friendfeed

Duncan Riley — Sat, 12 Jul 2008 06:36:52 +0000

Posty is an Adobe AIR application that supports interaction with Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, Tumblr and Friendfeed.

Posty delivers content for each via a separate tab for each service. Customization features are basic, allowing users to change the color of fonts, but nothing else. Posty users can post to one, all, or a combination of each service through the one screen, allowing for easy cross posting to the supported platforms.

As more and more competing services come out, the ability to track and participate in each one, particularly at a time where Twitter users are scattering all over the place, becomes harder. Posty goes some way in delivering an easy to use, one stop frontend for multiple services.

Why I don’t like it: the screen shot above is Posty’s actual size. 550px wide. Fat as fat can be for a service that should be complimentary on your screen, not take up a large chunk of monitor space. It also lacks friend content for Pownce and Jaiku, making it a waste of time for both. However, it is a step in the right direction, the app is still fairly young, and it would be fair to presume that some of these issues will be addressed with later releases. If you can handle the size, it’s worth a look.

(via Sarah in Tampa)

Twitter Has Jumped The Shark

Duncan Riley — Sat, 07 Jun 2008 02:44:40 +0000

Notice something about Twitter lately besides the constant downtime? It’s gotten quiet. Not deadly quiet, but when it is up every day there seems to be less and less being said. In my case gone are the days where I could use Twitter to track the latest breaking story or the days I had dozens of conversations. It’s not just me, Dave Winer and Rafe Needleman have both noticed as well, and others have privately made similar observations to me over the last week.

Twitter has jumped the shark.

“It’s not just down time on Twitter lately that has made the service sit somewhere between frustrating and useless. Even when Twitter is up, updates/ refreshes fail, pages don’t load and third party tools can’t connect. There has been a lot of downtime…Twitter is a service you want to love. Like Blogger, Evan William’s earlier start up, it has not only become a market leader, it has been vital in creating a new online service market focused on IM.”

I wrote those words in a post on TechCrunch in May 2007, and back then coming out and saying enough is enough with Twitter was pretty controversial. The post had 31 trackbacks and a range of comments, but people kept on using Twitter because ultimately that was where the community was, something competing services, despite superior platforms, could not find. I soon realized that Twitter users were a dedicated, loyal bunch who would stick with the service no matter what. But even this dedicated loyalty had a limit, and suddenly it seems that at long last people have had enough and are either abandoning Twitter or like me, spending less time on it.

Plurk has been one recipient on the growing Twitter backlash (our review here). Plurk has already become a love it or hate it service, but the remarkable thing I’ve noticed is that it has grown a large, mainstream active community overnight, the missing ingredient from Pownce and Jaiku. However it’s not Twitter, and it never will be. It has benefited from Twitter’s problems, but it isn’t going to replace it.

Perhaps the saddest thing with Twitter jumping the shark in the loss of the Twitter community, as Dave Winer writes “People wondered what would replace it (Twitter). It’s becoming clear the answer to that is the worst possible one — nothing. The energy of Twitter is evaporating. Which is terrible.” I’m still hopeful that enough people will decide to migrate to one service that it becomes a Twitter replacement, however to what? FriendFeed could build a Twitter killer but they haven’t, Jaiku is a great platform sitting on Google’s servers…but it’s closed for signups, Pownce is…well…Pownce, and Plurk has no API.

The obvious business opportunity: somebody comes out with a Twitter competitor with API and scalability. If you’ve got one ping me so I can take a look and give it a plug.