Inside View from Ireland: The Day Twitter Died

TWITTER TOOK A DAY OFF (see left) for most of its users in Europe when an 2.5 hour maintenance session extended through most of the work day in Europe today. That probably means many employers gained additional productivity from some workers because keeping Twitter active on your computer screen is like spending hours at the water cooler. The closest I have come to Twitter in real life was hanging with the lads during a smoke break. The online conversation is normally casual to the point of being banal so you wouldn't expect to find the next cancer cure on Twitter. Nonetheless, a lot of people use Twitter as a primary part of their business communications. Twitter has dozens of fan clubs. It can be used as a teaser since you can point to blog posts, new video clips or fresh links by using Twitter. Those who have researched its effectiveness as a marketing tool have stats to prove their point. So when Twitter takes the day off and shunts everything into a black hole, web visitors may take a dive as well.

For those who are bi-textual, Twitter is just one arrow in the quiver of communications. In my daily usage, Twitter is a weak sister in a mix of direct text (SMS to my phone) and Jaiku (web text to phone message box). I am a power user on Jaiku because Jaiku saves me time by preventing false starts and by writing my work for me.

I have run sanity checks on ideas by sending random thoughts over Jaiku and then reading some very thoughtful responses. In many cases, I changed tack after getting reader feedback. I have received directions on the street in London over Jaiku when people at tube stations did not know answers to questions I got by sending them to Jaiku for feedback. In rural Ireland, I can get a text answer back where I have no voice coverage with my mobile phone.

Using Jaiku during conference calls and during planning meetings has helped me write the minutes to those events. Because Jaiku lets you set up channels, those listening to the public flow won't be bothered when there's chatter in a specific channel. So I text to channels, type on my laptop to those channels and then comment on threads created by those channel comments. This is direct business communication at the epitome of brevity.

I trust Jaiku more than any other textable application. I can limit the time it talks to my phone, I can shut off people or constrain the kind of information the people I follow send to my phone. I can do all the throttling without upsetting those I follow because they cannot see I'm not listening, even though it looks like I'm following them. It's like watching an animated avatar with the sound off--an ultimate power tool in social media.

After a day of Twitter taking a break, a considerable amount of Paddy chatter babbled around on Jaiku. Those who spent a day poking around Jaiku found some things that make Jaiku much more sophisticated than Twitter. They might have found some of the discussion more eclectic on Jaiku because Jaiku has attracted people who do not run blogs and often do not comment on blogs. I think some of the blow-ins from Twitter will hang around on Jaiku and that would be good because the collective intelligence of the Jaiku community will grow in an environment I have learned to trust for its granular controls and robust performance.

Find me at topgold.jaiku.com and at twitter.com/topgold. Both are available as newsfeeds. Now read Conor O'Neill's review of Jaiku.
Ken McGuire -- "Twitter Downtime Means a Busy Day on Jaiku"