I Finally Get Jaiku
It’s weird. In my quest to find shiny, fun tech toys, I had overlooked Jaiku to some extent. My general dissatisfaction with Twitter and slowly simmering dissatisfaction with Facebook had me take a fresh look at Jaiku. And you know what? I finally understand.
Oh sure, I thought I understood it before. But I started using it. I can see that it uses the cell phone network to figure out you’re someplace else. Where you are changes as you move around.
Like Twitter, you can update your status. Perhaps with not as many clients as Twitter, but they exist. And with each update lies the ability to start a conversation. And it’s kept track of, not just as part of a stream, but in it’s own container.
The limiting factors for Jaiku are: mobile updates can only occur via international SMS or via a client from a Nokia S60 2nd or 3rd Edition device. The mobile client, while providing presence information, does not provide the ability to comment on other people’s updates. And of course keeping a client running on the phone cuts into both memory for other appications and battery life.
Jaiku may be working to address these issues and working to expand the mobile options for participating beyond Nokia devices. One hopes they do, because I finally see the promise.
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