I don’t really know. Twitter was the first one in this space to really get a lot of buzz, but I guess they’ve fallen behind. I actually signed up for Twitter, though, and I was never a Jaiku user. Others agree that Twitter’s simplicity is what makes it appealing.

NetworkWorld has a brief commentary on this. Notably, neither of these sites really had a business model.

Jaiku is not a leader in their market. They’re a microblogging underdog. But it’ll be very intriguing to see what Google does with them, as they tend to bring order to the markets they enter. Will they standardize some protocols for microblogging? Only a company like Google has the ability to effectively create standards.

With microblogging growing explosively, this is certainly a good time to be in this market. Now that Google is a player, how does that change things? It’s certainly going to be difficult for another company to become dominant when Google is their competitor. But it can be done…

How does this fit in with Google’s possible plans for a phone? Jaiku is a way to keep in touch… and being able to do so with a phone from anywhere is truly a killer app. It’s life streaming.

I’m familiar with Jaiku primarily through Leo Laporte, the Chief TWiT.

Interestingly, things did not go as well as hoped for DodgeBall. Along these lines, some complain that Google is an 85% company.

Jaiku is an activity stream and presence sharing service that works from the Web and mobile phones. An activity stream is a log of everyday activities: your status messages, recommendations, events you’re attending, photos you’ve taken – anything you post directly to Jaiku or add using Web feeds.

Google has a plan to use the ideas and technology behind Jaiku to make compelling and useful products.

Google acquired Jaiku, as announced on the Google Blog.

This is my long and elaborate post about how Jaiku affects the Google phone, its relationship to Twitter, how it will change things in the microblogging scene, how using a phone to update your live feed will be a killer app, how competing with Google is different, why Google finds Jaiku useful, microblogging standards, and more… Firefox crashed, and I thought I lost it… but fortunately, WordPress had autosaved it as a draft! Sweet!

Here’s a link to info on FreeTrafficTip.com… there’s info about Jaiku and a link to their site tour.