Stick that into your feed reader and smoke it!

Not too long ago I joked that all we do on Jaiku is complain about Twitter being down. Ironically, since that time, I've found myself microblogging more and more to Jaiku and less and less to Twitter. Over the last few weeks in fact I've posted way more often to the former.

So it's fun to read the plethora of opinion on Techmeme about the significance of yesterday's purchase of Jaiku by Google. Lots of informed speculation, but in my opinion it comes down to three things -

1) Talent: I believe I've gained more insight into the future of social networking from Jyri Engeström over the last few months than from all the A-list bloggers dumped together. His background in sociology probably explains that. Last June I paraphrased those learnings in a post inspired by my favorite episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation - Das zweite Leben - when the virtual is as valuable as the real. Google would be wise to give Engeström free reign in directing their social strategy going forward.

2) Mobile: As Tim O'Reilly previously discovered Jaiku has a powerful mobile presence application and clearly Google is big on mobile.

3) Lifestreaming -> Open Social Networking: Scoble hits the nail on the head while extrapolating from an observation by Jonathan Davies -

"Jaiku’s other strength is in aggregating RSS feeds into one place. Interesting that Google is building a very strong position in the RSS ecosystem with Google Reader and Feedburner and now Jaiku. Interesting, will Google use its RSS position against Facebook?... Imagine if Google made a more open social networking tool than Facebook all via RSS feeds? Stick that into your RSS feed reader and smoke it!

Comments

[bernard]

the integration into the address book is one of its best features.

i can see where people are and see if they are free for a beer or a coffee..without having to ask them!

[Bernie Goldbach]

I knew Jaiku was mainsteam when my S60 Nokia client found a hooker in my local area using Jaiku in Copenhagen during Reboot 9. Try that using Twitter. As early adopters know, you can't get up when your messaging infrastructure is always down.

[Niall Larkin]

My first instinct and immediate blog was also talent. Jyri has the insight alright. And Google have consistently bought in talent. But the other two points make it clear that Jaiku makes a great fit with existing vision at Google. Nice post.

[James Corbett]

Aha! That's where I saw it. There was so much written in the first 24 hours about the purchase that I couldn't remember where I saw which reference but I definitely agree with your interpretation Niall about Twitter giving off the impression of having hit it lucky and not knowing where to go from there.