Jaiku beats Twitter for communicating

05 January 2008

I’ve been experimenting with microblogging services Twitter and Jaiku for a couple of weeks now. While Twitter has a huge user base, I prefer Jaiku for a few extra features it has.

  1. Jaiku has a more convenient system for posting comments or replies. I noticed in Twitter that if you try to respond to someone with @username, it assumes you’re replying to their most recent twit when in reality you might be replying to a twit from two days ago. Jaiku, on the other hand, allows you to add comments to specific jaikus. Also, you don’t have to be following a user for their comment to appear in your stream like you do with Twitter. Worried about spam? I was, too, but Jaiku allows you to delete comments or mark them as spam.

    jaiku-comment.png

  2. Groups. Jaiku has groups, called channels. You can post to a group by starting your jaiku with the pound sign, e.g. #linux to post to the linux group. This is great for creating a community.
  3. jaiku-feeds.pngAdd your life stream. Jaiku lets you add other feeds and adds them to your Jaiku stream. Del.icio.us, flickr, twitter, blogs, etc. can all appear in Jaiku.

I’m not a mobile user so I can’t really compare how they compare in that regard. Obviously this biggest downside to Jaiku is that it’s by invite only right now (I have some–just ask) and therefore all of your friends won’t be on it. Now I’m trying to figure out whether I want to continue using both Twitter and Jaiku or just stick with Jaiku. I suppose I’ll keep both since the human networks are different.

14 Responses to “Jaiku beats Twitter for communicating”

  1. erik
    January 8th, 2008 - 2:17 pm

    The two things twitter has over Jaiku right now are,
    1. Private messages
    2. Local SMS shot code in the U.S.

    The Jaiku team also needs a client for all the mobile operating systems, not just Symbian OS

  2. remouk
    January 10th, 2008 - 11:02 am

    @erik: “Private messages”, aren’t they useless? Emails are far better (no limitations), and still fast to write.

  3. Karim
    February 6th, 2008 - 4:08 pm

    Thanks for the review. I’d really like to have a jaiku invite to give it a try and play with its api –I’m a webdevelopper. Any one here has some invites? :) Thanks in advance!

  4. todd
    February 6th, 2008 - 4:23 pm

    @Karim: sent!

  5. Karim
    February 6th, 2008 - 4:37 pm

    Todd! That was F-f-f-aaast! :) Thanks again!

  6. remouk
    February 7th, 2008 - 3:27 am

    If someone has another invite left, I’m very interested too. :) Thanks!

  7. todd
    February 7th, 2008 - 9:17 am

    @remouk: sent!

  8. remouk
    February 7th, 2008 - 9:26 am

    Thank you very much. :)

  9. jason
    February 13th, 2008 - 6:12 pm

    If you have another invite, I’d really appreciate it. Jaiku seems to get so much right!

  10. jason
    February 16th, 2008 - 11:38 pm

    Thanks! Much appreciated.

  11. Robert
    February 18th, 2008 - 1:39 pm

    Until it goes down……….

  12. todd
    February 18th, 2008 - 1:58 pm

    @Robert it had been going so well since they last worked on it! So yeah, with the qualification “when it works.”

  13. Jay
    February 24th, 2008 - 4:30 am

    Todd, what’s your opinion on pownce? Btw, I would love to check out jaiku and compare it to twitter as well. Have any invites left?

  14. todd
    February 24th, 2008 - 1:42 pm

    @Jay I haven’t really tried Pownce but they look somewhat similar (direct replies to messages) but it includes events, files and links. I haven’t signed up since it went out of private beta; might look at it when I have the time.

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