I don’t know if it’s the horrible logistics at yesterday’s keynote and that I had to sit on the floor to watch it, or the T-Shirts that in binary say, “GoogleKO” (Mike, I’ll give you mine if you have lunch with me tomorrow), or maybe the fact that I now can’t get internet connectivity as I write this due to the poor planning for WiFi in this room. Or maybe it’s that I’m presenting on Facebook and have had Facebook on the mind the time I’ve been here, but I’ve really been on an anti-Google run lately and I’m not sure why.
The biggest thing I’ve noticed here at Google I/O is there is absolutely no presence of Jaiku at the event. I haven’t seen any booths, presenters are not running it up on the screens like we saw with Twitter at Web 2.0, and it almost seems as though Google doesn’t care that there is an opportunity with the problems Twitter is having right now. In fact, I think I’ve even seen Twitter on a few of the presenters boxes rather than Jaiku.
Does Google just not care about Jaiku? They have an amazing opportunity here. Twitter is down about one half of the time. They are hosting a blog on their competitor, Tumblr’s, site because they can’t trust their own servers by all means! I don’t agree that FriendFeed is a competitor to Twitter – Jaiku is, however, and now is the time for them to step up! Google has a conference with attendance that perhaps exceeds that of Web 2.0, and the whole world watching them as they make some serious announcements, so I can’t figure out why they aren’t taking this opportunity to gain an edge on their competitors.
Jaiku is perhaps the only other service out there with an SMS status update system similar to Twitter’s. People really want to find another solution that solves what Twitter gives them. Jaiku does this, and Google is failing seriously at promoting it and bringing attention to it at this conference.
Stay N' Alive 
Well said Jesse. I signed up for a Beta account at jaiku.com about a week and a half ago and still haven't had a response. If Google was doing what they normally do with beta services, I would just text in and they would confirm me (remember GMail?) I don't know why Google isn't taking advantage of this and other start-ups they acquired recently (feedburner.com is another).
At this point, I can't believe it's taking them so long. In reality, Gmail
took awhile for me to get an invite if I remember right though. I would
think though at a conference like this that you would see more people
saying, “add hashtag #googleio to your Jaiku posts to join the discussion”.
This is an excellent opportunity!
Of course you've heard that Jaiku is moving to Google's App Engine. I suspect that like twitter, scalability is a problem for Jaiku as well, which is why they remain under invite-only status, and also why they are moving to the App Engine.
I've also heard rumors that except for the efforts to move Jaiku to the App Engine, Jaiku is just a 20% project at Google, which means that Google really doesn't care about it. I've seen a few Google Acquisitions get thrown to the sidelines (Dodgeball?), and maybe Jaiku is another one of those which will never really be a serious Google property, which is too bad.
P.S. If anyone needs an invite to Jaiku, try JaikuInvites.com.
That's what I'm afraid of – google putting jaiku by the wayside, which
is a shame
@jessestay this came up this morning at @windley's CTO breakfast too. No Jaiku… Re @jacob, it was concluded that there was surely a scalability issue too… so, seems like your blog post here covers it all…
Yeah, it sounds like Jaiku's having their own issues. Sounds like Google didn't really want to get more publicity if that's happening. It would be bad for both Jaiku and AppEngine since Jaiku just converted. Better Twitter get all the bad attention for now.
Yeah, it sounds like Jaiku's having their own issues. Sounds like Google didn't really want to get more publicity if that's happening. It would be bad for both Jaiku and AppEngine since Jaiku just converted. Better Twitter get all the bad attention for now.