Jaiku’s not as Dead-pool as I Thought
Yesterday I wrote about the lack of noise (or updates, or anything!) around Jaiku since its purchase by Google. Turns out that Jyri made a post today on the Jaiku Blog addressing some of the points.
First, we know the Jaiku site is currently not as responsive as it should be… Second, I know you’re all excited to hear what’s next for Jaiku and what we’ve been working on since joining Google. To be honest, a lot of our time in the early going was spent on getting to know Google
I’ve no doubt that getting everything integrated and running inside Google at Mountain View would not be an easy matter, but a complete lack of posts in the three months or so since adoption is going to lead us all to wonder what’s happening. Highly ironic given that Jaiku is a communication and presence tool to be called out on (a lack of) both.
Anyway the blog post is a good, fast reply to keep everyone calm, and should give the team some breathing space. I’ll ask for one thing, and it’s the same thing I’ve always asked for in the Jaiku client – the ability to use Wifi as a connection option. Being hard coded to use the mobile phone 3G/GPRS data only is almost unforgivable in a mobile app that works so well with the rest of the smartphone’s systems.
Shall we return to this in a month or so, dear reader?
We should definitely return to this. I’m really curious to see where this goes. Thanks for keeping on top of this, Ewan.
The blog post from Jaiku seems a bit odd to me. So the site has been slow because of users adding feeds faster than usual? Can’t be new users, because they still don’t allow anyone new in – even after three months.
And I personally wouldn’t talk about new features and “cool new ways” if I wasn’t allowed to disclose even the tiniest bit of information about those features.
Jan Ole, although new registrations to Jaiku require an invitation, we’re getting a steady flow of new users through these invitations. More specifically, the recent slowdowns are caused by an increase in the the volume of feed data fetched by Jaiku, some of which is spam. We’re cleaning up the database and speeding up the service by doing various operations over the coming week or so.
We’ve been keeping quiet while we work on new product development, but we’re in a period where we’ve moved countries and are learning completely new systems at Google, and consequently it takes a while to develop and launch something. I wrote a quick heads-up from the team so you guys know what’s going on even though there’s nothing to announce yet. Thanks for your patience, we appreciate it.
Jyri,
Thanks for your comments and explanation – all clearer now. Now, about this Wifi… :-)
— Ewan
Ewan like many of your blogger friends, you are quick to criticize but what have you ever done to create a business and the successfully grow/sell it.
Much like other pointless bloggers, Arrington, Scoble, Ingram you really piss me off. You sit their piously creating negatives about people who have actually got of their arse and delivered something of value and in the case of Jyri, he successfully sold it for loads of money.
I wish you and your pointless blogging parasite friends would try and start a company, create real value and then we can all take cheap shots at you.
Scoble is the worst. He makes noise with no value and when it goes wrong he jumps ship and blames others.
‘Mad Scotsman’
Thanks for your comments. I’m sure a cursory look at my About page may help you if you’re not already familiar with it, but for reference…
http://www.allaboutsymbian.com/
http://www.thepodcastnetwork.com/
…are current. Okay so none of them have the big cash-out that happens to many, but I make a living writing, and being under my own control. Works for me. And who’s to say I don’t have ideas for companies and am working in stealth?
In any case, as a user of Jaiku, why shouldn’t I point out that nothing’s happened since they were bought by Google? Seems a fair cop to me.
You’ll also note I have full contact details here so you can easily reach me, unlike yourself commenting rather anonymously – although your IP address is *very* interesting.