Inside View from Ireland: Comparing Jaiku to Twitter

AS JYRI ENGESTROM, front man for Jaiku, showed Google's business development team an inside view of Jaiku, Pat Phelan asked the Jaiku community to explain why he should migrate from Twitter to Jaiku. The resultant commentary provides an insightful picture of microblogging. Behind all the reasons sit the people who connect and follow each other by using free and easy text-friendly means of communicating. The three biggest microblogging communities revolve around Twitter, Jaiku and Pownce (listed in probable order of their sizes). Each community includes people who maintain accounts in all three systems. After playing with Twitter and Jaiku for nearly 2000 messages in each community, I have throttled back Twitter and will stay active with Jaiku. It feels like I'm leaving friends at the roadside and driving away but I know another bus is right behind--the one with the Twitter logo on the side. All three buses (Jaiku, Twitter and Pownce) have plenty of room inside but most people admit they prefer the wiggle room or amenities or the friendly chatter in one over any other. In my case, I have conversations worth following in Jaiku because they incorporate threads of discussion that have already evolved into business deals. I also have a limited amount of time for follow-up and don't want people to think I will respond to banter on Twitter as quickly as I will respond to a text from Jaiku. I trust Jaiku to push content directly to my mobile phone. I tried that experiment with Twitter and the result messed up my phone for more than a week. As with any other technology, people opt to use the system in ways that suits them best. I'm happy knowing that without any special configuration, Jaiku and its community of regulars slots into my lifestyle with less hassle than any other microblogging system. So I'm a converted resident of Jaikustan. Here are some other reasons I've made the move from Twitter to Jaiku.

1. Jaiku feels like a mobile experience. If you are not a road warrior, you don't need to use a phone with machine intelligence, one that offers telepresence and easy group messaging at low cost. I get these things with the Jaiku Series 60 client, free group texting from m.jaiku.com and access to a pool of experts who have helped me find restaurants, hotels, ATM machines and water taxi boarding docks when in other countries. I got these tips by asking people on Jaiku and on several occasions, I got screenshots back from friends who located stuff online at their desks and then sent the answers through a Jaiku feed to my phone. This ease of use, across an inexpensive data link, has enabled me to dictate a similar immersive experience for students in a Media Writing class when they complete an assignment involving a travelogue.

2. Jaiku offers easy-to-follow threaded conversations. When dealing with issues like software updates, conference planning, inventory of specialised equipment or text-arounds to gauge interest for an event, Jaiku makes easy work of what could be a game of telephone tag or a distracting exercise involving a barrage of annoying single shots sent as salvos over several hours (sometimes called tweets). It feels as though Jaiku wants to facilitate multi-path conversations while Twitter likes to satisfy the itch for people to shout greetings into space. I have never believed that a "conversation" occurs when a sole speaker stands on a corner and starts impromptu babbling. Nor do I have much time to chop through that kind of babble--although I respect people who want to start every morning with casual chat and who finish every cash till moment with the same superficial banter. It's just that I don't really want those glorious greetings arriving as a beep on my phone when they are not personalised from real friends or imperative texts from family members. And I certainly do not want to click to listen or click to view rich media carried in a text stream.

3. Easier selective distraction with Jaiku. Protocol suggests that you should add (follow) someone on Twitter, Jaiku or Pownce if they add you to a list of people they are following. If you routinely add the people who want to follow you and then you read every character they type into the ether, you have more time on your hands than most people will pay to fund. As much as I like to join conversations, I know I don't have the time to read everything I would like to see. That's because I'm paid to engage, not merely to read. Engaging dialogue requires time. Lurking and listening to a river of conversation erodes quality time. I have learned enough about social networking to know that real empowerment needs to reside at my side of the screen. Jaiku allows me to add a follower without actually listening to that follower. Although Twitter lets you control individual conversations as well, you cannot add content to your twitterstream without typing it into a box on a screen. Jaiku lets you shovel all sorts of syndicated content into your information stream. Some people call that "lifestream content". Jaiku lets you turn off each individual element of lifestream content from people you follow and when you shut down all or part of a flow of information, the isolated person has no idea you've muted them. To me, that's a superpower and akin to being able to nod approvingly at a boring person while they jabber on about yet another meaningless thing. I call it "selective distraction" because I can select the level of noise in any part of a flow or I can turn all of it off. This kind of selectivity is essential when permitting Jaiku to send a flow of text updates directly to my SMS inbox. I tried this with Twitter and was disappointed with the lack of responsiveness of the twitter text messaging system. On several occasions, I could not unsubscribe from text updates or could not delete people I was following. I have never encountered that snag with Jaiku.

3. Jaiku offers the most effective text back channel on the market. We used the podcamp back channel to set up, run and wrap up Podcamp Ireland in September 2007. I continue listening to chatter coming from past conferences. It's very helpful to learn lessons learned as well as to get an inkling of products and services new to the market. Jaiku has facilitated a new channel for press releases that I find very helpful in regards to several products I am reviewing for an Irish newspaper.

4. Reliability multi-channel publishing through Jaiku. If you use Instant Messaging, you can post from there, and get updates to there also. Jaiku's IM connectivity is much stronger than Twitter's.

Unlike electronic or computer networks, social networks like those nurtured through microblogging communities lose value once they reach a certain size. "The value of a social network is defined not only by who's on it, but who's excluded," says Paul Saffo, a Silicon Valley forecaster. I do not get a network effect from adding hordes of friends on Twitter or Jaiku. I really don't care that I am not part of a select circle of experts or that I'm not among the first called for giveaways, speaker bureaus or promotions. I willingly step away from those opportunities to avoid being spammed by random friend-requests, unappreciated calls for advice and from having to delete hourly email notifications of yet another person adding me to their list of people they follow.

I believe my reaction relates to the future of electronic social networking. The real future of social networking still lies around the parish pump. We know this is true: small communities will migrate to the internet and replicate the millions that exist offline. No single platform--not Jaiku, Pownce, Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn, or MySpace--can capture all the social buzz.

It is unfair to slot Jaiku, Pownce and Twitter into the same use groups. Each offers individual features and some features do not appear in the other applications. At this point in time, each application has attracted loyal followers and those people will continue using the technology that works for them in the community they enjoy the most. Although I feel a little disloyal walking away from an active place inside a Twitter community where I had a voice, I know I can still listen through RSS since I can read the commentary written by those who share and share alike. And if I'm really really interested in what those tweets, I can add them into a second Jaiku identity I maintain, then watch them percolate as updates on my phone.

In another part of the blogging world, someone is probably talking about the stupid valuations attached to growing social networks like Facebook. After reading more than my fair share of sociological analyses and watching intelligent third level students distance themselves from the MySpace, Bebo and Facebook hype, I think much of the discussion around Jaiku v. Twitter boils down to what proves most useful. For the big elephant (Google), value directly extends from links to and from parts of the internet. Google bought Jaiku, not because it is a product on its own, but because Jaiku offers a feature set with utilitarian value. Twitter may have some cool features and some clever people in its community but my guess is that a feature set rarely sustains a community. Given a choice, people want better plumbing because on the internet, we like our tubes to flow fast more than we like the tasty stuff we find inside. Sure, we want both but the utility remains standing long after the sheen wears off.

Inspired by Pat Phelan -- "I am determined to move, tell me how wonderful Jaiku really is and why I should move please" and more than 50 comments he received to his query.
The Economist -- "Social Graph-iti" in the Business section, 20 October 2007.

This post was selected for inclusion into the Random Jaiku collection.