Jaiku bought by Google
October 9 Mike Butcher
BREAKING NEWS: Jaiku, the Twitter-like service from Finland, has been bought by Google.
Jaiku Founders Jyri Engeström and Petteri Koponen today posted this on their homepage:
“While it’s too soon to comment on specific plans, we look forward to working with our new friends at Google over the coming months to expand in ways we hope you’ll find interesting and useful. Our engineers are excited to be working together and enthusiastic developers lead to great innovation. We look forward to accomplishing great things together. In order to focus on innovation instead of scaling, we have decided to close new user sign-ups for now. But fear not, all our Jaiku services will stay running the way you are used to and you will be able to invite your friends to Jaiku.”
The terms of the acquisition have not been released.
This is a fascinating move by Google which would have looked at Twitter prior to this acquisition, and Twitter’s recent $5 million series A funding last July.
The Finland-based SMS and microblogging service has long been regarded by aficionados as the better service in that it has a fairly sophisticated mobile application for the Symbian/Nokia platform, and allows more web-like commenting on its blogs, as opposed to Twitter’s more simplistic “@” replies. Jaiku’s client application for the Nokia S60 can be used to replace the Contacts program and enables automatic broadcast of your presence based on your availability and profile. You can also update your Jaiku page via the app respond to your Jaiku friends posts.
There will be inevitable comparison’s with Google’s acquisition of Dodgeball, which largely came to nothing, but it would appear that the time for social networking and blogging via mobile has come, and Google’s ability to add scale and marketing muscle to Jaiku should be putting Twitter on the back-foot right now. In addition, Jaiku - and in particular Jyri Engeström’s previous experience as a senior at Nokia - is going to help Google with its gPhone project.
A further statement clearly coming from Google read: “Activity streams and mobile presence are important areas where we believe Google can add a lot of value for users. Jaiku’s technology and talented team are a great addition to Google’s current application and mobile teams.”
It went on to say: “We are excited to welcome the Jaiku employees into Google. While it’s too soon to comment on specific products and development plans, we’ll be working with the Jaiku team over the coming months to expand their technology in ways we hope you’ll find interesting and useful.”
Jaiku will continue to support its existing user base but new user registrations have been closed, though some beta users will still be able to get an invite.
Jaiku was founded in February, 2006, one month before Twitter, and launched a service that July.
October 9th, 2007 at 5:25 pm
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Comments
October 9th, 2007 at 5:15 pm
Maybe they’ll starve development on it like they did with Dodgeball.
October 9th, 2007 at 5:20 pm
Will this mean the death of twitter?
October 9th, 2007 at 5:40 pm
Fascinating. I would generally discount the purist talk about Jaiku’s extra elegance, completeness etc. There’s lots of evidence that customer choice has hardly anything to do with these factors. Jaiku is hyper-finished, kind of aseptic. And the freight of extra features won’t translate into popular success. Having said that, it is really cool and plugging it into gmail, gtalk etc. really makes sense so I guess it’ll be massive.
BTW, another site I use and like but which seems to have disappeared into the Googleplex is Jot.com. What’s going on there?
October 9th, 2007 at 5:59 pm
Maybe this has something to do with the team over at Twitter. Haven’t most of them been through the googleplex on previous startups and therefore no value to google.
so whos gonna buy twitter? can we through facebook into the mix
October 9th, 2007 at 7:09 pm
I didn’t know Jaiku came first. Why did Google chose Jaiku? What’s gonna happen to Twitter now?
October 9th, 2007 at 10:37 pm
They’ll be bought by Yahoo! or Microsoft
October 10th, 2007 at 12:52 am
“This is a fascinating move by Google which would have looked at Twitter prior to this acquisition, and Twitter’s recent $5 million series A funding last July.”
That’s a pretty big assumption in my books, care too go more in-depth Mike?
October 10th, 2007 at 6:31 am
I am sure Google will add lot more to the current features. Looking forward for that.
October 10th, 2007 at 10:27 am
Though I understand that google wants to get nearer Nokia, a world-class mobile phones manufacturer, I don’t believe that it will refrain people from using Twitter.
Twitter does one thing and does it well.
FriendFeed does this other thing (called lifestreaming by Jeremy Keith) and does it well.
Jaiku does both. That may be a bit confusing for some users. Personally I use Twitter for shout-outs and FriendFeed for lifestreaming. Jaiku kinda does both and I don’t know how I feel about that.
I guess that while I don’t get cheaper mobile internet access I won’t enjoy Jaiku’s mobile client.
October 10th, 2007 at 11:35 am
Jaiku will become “G”aiku anyway now. Google gets a good gPhone with a new service + GrandCentral’s VoIP solution. With the phone and gOS becoming powerful, google gets a foot in the door.
Used Nokia people from Jaiku to counter Symbian, i would say.
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October 11th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
Google is being very aggresive in mobile space.