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Jaiku Versus Twitter: A Matter of Taste

Last week, Twitter power-user Leo Laporte announced that he was leaving Twitter due to the confusion it was causing over its similarity in name to his popular TWiT podcast. Still wanting a Twitter-like service, Laporte found that Finland-based Jaiku best suited his needs. So which of the two services should you be using, and why?

Jaiku is very much like Twitter, but with more options. For starters, in addition to the standard 140-character message, you can choose from one of 50 icons to better express your mood. The real benefit of Jaiku, however, is the built-in ability to add RSS feeds into your Jaiku stream. The possibilities with this are nearly endless.

Have a Flickr account? Add its RSS feed and Jaiku will pull pictures as you post them. Use Del.icio.us for your bookmarks? Jaiku will put those up as well. Want to show off the stories you are Digging? You get the idea. And of course, one of the main advantages of such a feature is that you can even put in your own site's feed address and Jaiku will automatically alert your followers every time you write a new post. People have thus far been using various services in conjunction with Twitter to do such things, but with Jaiku, it's all built in.

Webware has a great post detailing how can even pull your Twitter feed into your Jaiku stream to consolidate the services.

The service does come with its own set of quirks. First and foremost there is a considerable lag time in posting to the site similar to the one Twitter users experienced during Twitter's rapid growth after SXSW (which have since then been largely resolved). Jaiku is currently suffering from "The Leo Effect" (Laporte's endorsement has brought a lot of new members), and it appears that they are shuffling to accommodate the surge.

The site also features Google's AdSense ads on the lower part of the right-hand sidebar. While one can't knock them for trying to make some money off of a service they are offering, this does take away from the aesthetic of the site. Twitter still has yet to have a single ad on their site (though they are working on monetization ideas). In terms of looks, Jaiku is clearly going for a more rounded approach, while Twitter sticks with square-corners and rectangles. As a result of the multitude of features offered by the service, Jaiku is decidedly more cluttered (photos, icons, RSS feeds, and ads).

Ultimately it comes down to a matter of taste. If you're looking for a service that offers more than just the simple 140-character messages, you might want to check out Jaiku. Its ability to push basically any RSS feeds into your stream is a great feature especially if you are looking for a new outlet to find potential readers for your site. However if you're more of a fan of simplicity and and don't want to be bombarded by RSS posts, Twitter is likely the service for you.

Feel free to leave any thoughts on either service in the comments. And of course, feel free to add me as a friend on both Twitter and Jaiku.

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