Jaiku, the Twitter-like micro-blogging service from Finland has been acquired by Google. Here’s an excerpt of the statement posted by Jaiku on their homepage:
Jaiku is joining Google. While it’s too soon to comment on specific plans, we look forward to working with our new friends at Google over the coming months to expand in ways we hope you’ll find interesting and useful. Our engineers are excited to be working together and enthusiastic developers lead to great innovation. We look forward to accomplishing great things together. In order to focus on innovation instead of scaling, we have decided to close new user sign-ups for now.
Like always, new signups on Jaiku have been temporarily frozen. Terms of the deal or Google’s plans for Jaiku have not been disclosed.
It’s quite a shocker that Google didn’t consider Twitter or Pownce. While Jaiku’s user base is very small, it is technologically superior to its rivals. Jaiku has a powerful Nokia S60 based mobile application which can automatically broadcast your presence based on your profile and availability. Jaiku’s biggest plus point is its mobile community, which not only has its presence on the web, but also mobile devices.
With the acquisition of Jaiku, Google officially joins the activity streaming or microblogging bandwagon. Jaiku’s cofounder, Jyri Engeström, worked with Nokia before launching Jaiku.com. He should probably be a major asset to Google in building the highly rumored Google Phone.
Jaiku’s acquisition is being direct compared with Dodgeball, a mobile social networking service acquired by Google in May 2005. Dodgeball, however, didn’t go through any success with Google. Founders of Dodgeball then quit Google to work on other projects.
[Via: TechCrunch]
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