Google has announced that they have snapped up twitter competitor Jaiku today. It is a good move by google as they can integrate the microblogging technology into many of their existing services. Why not twitter some may ask. It has been long known that Jaiku's technology and features are better than twitter. There hasn't been mass exodus from twitter to Jaiku because people built up their friends on twitter and had their social network there. It was too much of a pain to ask all your friends to move to yet another service.

Google doesn't need the users, they have hundreds of millions of them using search and their existing applications. It is likely that that they wanted the more advanced technology to integrate it. Smart move.

What does that mean for twitter? It could be good and it could mean real competition is on the way. On one side of the coin, people like twitter because it is standalone and the vast amount of ways that there is to connect with twitter (API and 3rd party offerings). In that respect, there isn't really any strong competition anymore. On the other hand, if google integrates well then millions and millions will get twitterlike functionality with Orkut, gmail, office apps, google phone (if it is in fact on the way) and all of the other google apps. Lets see how well google integrates Jaiku with their existing offerings.

Here is a copy of the note on google's blog:

"Technology has made staying in touch with your friends and family both easier and harder: living a fast-paced, on-the-go lifestyle is easier (and a lot of fun), but it's more difficult to keep track of everyone when they're running around at warp speed. That's why we're excited to announce that we've acquired Jaiku, a company that's been hard at work developing useful and innovative applications for staying in touch with the people you care about most -- regardless of whether you're at a computer or on a mobile phone.

We wish a hearty Google welcome to Jaiku, and are looking forward to working together on new and innovative ways of keeping people connected."

The original Jaiku - google blog release can be found here .

Update:  Here is the note that is on the Jaiku home page

"Wonderful Jaiku users,

Jyri Engeström and Petteri Koponen, Jaiku Founders"

A set of Applescripts for updating iChat, Adium, Skype, Twitter, Jaiku and Facebook simultaneously (or any combination thereof…)

"EgorCast™ is a simple web service designed to integrate the functionality of jott.com and social mo-blogging (mobile blogging) services such as Twitter.com and Jaiku.com. Jott allows users to dial a predetermined number and record a 15 second message. Jott then transcribes the message and emails the transcription to your phone or email account. EgorCast provides a gateway between the messages from Jott and social mo-blogging services such as Twitter and Jaiku (or both if you want). EgorCast will also send your messages to your WordPress blog with a specific category or tag."

We posted a while ago about Twitter Clones (here and here ) and it looks like one of the Chinese "copy cat Twitters" are gaining popularity quickly.  It is called Fanfou .  It already has a wordpress plugin, maxthon plug and other 3rd party add ons.  It also has two Twittervision-like mashups that put Tweets on the 3D globe and a 2D map of China .  With 300 million Internet users there is no doubt that the China market is going to be a force to be reckoned with in the near future.  

Here is a screenshot of the pageviews of Twitter, Jaiku and Fanfou.  Fanfou has made it into the top 100,000 sites in the world, we will see if it can continue it's growth.

This is a pretty simple concept but could be revolutionary in the advance of microblogging. Channels. Or categories if you prefer. The basic premise is that you only listen to what you are interested in.  So if you are interested in Technology gadgets then subscribe and contribute to that channel.  Or maybe the channel is a music band, dance group, geographical area or whatever. 

We learned about this through a blog post here and he has a valid point to ponder.  He is wondering if this functionality will entice Twitterers to move over to Jaiku?

What does Twitter have up their sleeve in terms of adding new funtionality?  If anything. 

What do you think?  Will this entice you over to Jaiku ?

Thanks to Kristen Nicole on Mashable for the sneak peak into Brabblr's private beta. She writes..

.."With this meta tool, you can add updates to all of your Twitter-like blogs. Brabblr supports Twitter, Jaiku, Frazr, Wamadu and Textln. Brabblr works in the same manner as Twitter and the rest, and gives you the option of receiving updates from your friends or recent updates from the entire community. Each update indicates where it came from, which lets me know that Brabblr should be importing updates from the other sites it connects to, but this feature seems to show that all updates are coming via Brabblr instead of their respective sites." ..

See the full article here.