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Google buys Twitter rival Jaiku

Google buys JaikuThese days, when I hear that Google has bought a company, I feel sorry for its founders, however rich they're becoming. Google just bought Jaiku for a rumored $12 million. Not bad for a service that's mostly a copycatan identical twin of Twitter, allowing users to broadcast short messages to friends by text message and IM. Sure, they got a nice payout. But my gut tells me that the price was dooming Jaiku to irrelevance. Google's track record of botched acquisitions — remember dMarc Broadcasting or Dodgeball, anyone? Didn't think so — just grows longer and longer. At YouTube, most of the pre-Google employees are resting and vesting, I hear — waiting for their stock-option packages to reach full value, and then plotting their escapes. If Jaiku's employees are students of history, one hopes they inked an agreement that allowed them an early exit in case things go sour. Evan Williams, who sold his previous company to Google, must be softly chuckling to himself.

10:20 AM on Tue Oct 9 2007
By Owen Thomas
1,257 views
5 comments

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  • Image of Jeff Clavier Jeff Clavier at 11:06 AM on 10/09/07
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    Just for the record (and no, I had no interest in Jaiku), I made the same Twitter knock-off comment about Jaiku upon joining the service, and Tim O'Reilly (and others) pointed out that Jaiku was actually older than Twitter.

  • Image of gregorsamsa1977 gregorsamsa1977 at 01:15 PM on 10/09/07
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    Calling Jaiku a "twitter knock-off" is a very very stupid thing. Isn't this what FSJ calls "DENTONING"?

  • Image of stanfordboy stanfordboy at 01:16 PM on 10/09/07
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    in case anyone is keeping track, it was a year ago today that google announced the youtube acquisition. maybe this will become an annual thing?

  • Image of Owen Thomas Owen Thomas at 08:52 PM on 10/09/07
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    *

    @gregorsamsa1977: Fine, fine, fine.

  • Image of jacob jacob at 08:56 AM on 10/10/07
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    Jaiku is "Address Book 2.0" (something Tim O'Reilly apparently groks) and their closest competitor is probably Plazes, not Twitter. Jaiku just happens to *include* Twitter-like microblogging, and because everyone has the hots for Twitter, they tend to overlook its rather more mature cousin from abroad.

    I would hope that this acquisition means Google realised that Jaiku is actually what they were looking for in Dodgeball. If the founders do find Google not to be what they were hoping for, at least they'll have the cash to try again-providing they haven't been completely demoralised.

    PS: What's with the faux em-dashes? You sending posts by telegraph or something?

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