Like so many of those services that I sign up for I completely forgot that I had an account until I went to PodCamp last weekend.
What’s attractive about Jaiku, for me at least, is that it’s a sort of mini-blog format that also allows you to share your other RSS feeds, so my “presence” is populated with my various blog posts, last.fm activity and anything that I’ve actually posted to Jaiku directly.
One of the features that really interests me is the concept of “channels”, so that you can talk about specific topics or, as in the case of podcamp, events.
Being able to post quick one liners is nice and you can get some interesting discussions going with your contacts that you might not have otherwise.
The only thing that concerns me is that the service is free and I can’t see how it will be able to remain free in the long term. Yes they are showing Adsense ads on the sidebar, but how many users are actually clicking? How can they afford to send all the SMS updates etc., to the thousands of users?
Is there a business aspect to the service that I’ve missed?
Monetization via things like private channels etc as far as I know. Freemium model.
“Is there a business aspect to the service that I’ve missed?”
I had heard about them but having read your post it was the 1st time I looked at their site. Right off the bat I noticed that they use Jaikas as a verb.”share your Jaikus;post new Jaikus” *sigh* why not just call it ‘Jks’ as in txt speak if that is what they are aiming for. We all know google got lucky in that regard.
Looking at the explore tab I spotted tinyurl’s as expected they are being used to obfuscate NSFW links back to a blog,(3 in the feed I seen,all from the same user) Very shoddy imho, You would think that they would at least mod on their ‘Take a Tour intro’.What ever about the content that signed up members wish to share with each other.Channel topics seems like a good idea, killer app for a .mobi site ?
As you may guess I’m not a fan but having said that I’m not signed up either.
Social Networking services fill a gap in that they allow everybody a web presence with little or no effort on their part. Users provide the content and in doing so they inturn become the product without even understanding or from what I can see, even caring!
Those that do understand take control and use the services as they would any other tool. What ever happened to Friends ReUnited after all the hype died down. Did their PR budget run out. The Media rushed to YouTube MySpace and Second Life as they did Bebo fearing that they would be left behind or were the Marketing Folks driving hits with thinly veiled Press Releases. I noticed RTE flashed a myspace site or was it bebo during a show.I was busy collecting the batteries for the remote after it bounced off the wall 😉 so I’m not sure which.
‘Web 2.®’ services have only 3 options that I can see. Sell ads to try and offset the running costs until they find a way to cash in on user data or the biggie, the holy grail… be bought out by one of the big players for an obscene amount of money.
Facebook valued at $10 Billion, for what exactly…userDATA and lots of it. I wonder what the DB for the Tesco ClubCard would be worth.
Welcome to Web2. We the consumer are now the product, its the new business model for those with deep enough pockets to bring a service to market. Who would have thought that the trill of watching a coffee pot boil would have lead to this.
/thanks, I feel better now.
Michele
What’s happening with Blacknight?
Where’s my site?
Bock the Robber: We’ll post a report of last night’s incident on the company blog as soon as we’ve been able to compile it. Keep an eye on http://blog.blacknight.ie
Michele
Conor – Do you have any details about these private channels? The technology they have is pretty cool.
Rahood – I noticed that there is a lot of junk if you go exploring the “channels”, though there is an option to report comments / entries as spam. I’ve no idea how well they are handling the moderation, as none of the channels I’m active on are affected
Private channels are on the way, from what I’ve read. Ditto moderation of normal channels. None of the ones I am on have had any spam.
Conor
Any idea when they’ll make them available?
Michele
Michele,
You blog about Jaiku and suddently Google buy it?
Jesus!
Come ere, feel free to rant about how great P.ie is! 😉