Grounded In Reality

Leo Laporte’s move to Jaiku from Twitter caused both the crash of the Jaiku server (he has more than 4,000 followers, a greater following than Robert Scoble), and put Jaiku on the nanoblogging map.  (I have not heard of Twitter prior to SXSW Interactive 2007, and only heard about Jaiku on TWiT when Leo made the move.)

I’ve been checking out both services, and my initial recommendation is Twitter over Jaiku.  Though I think Jaiku has some very nifty functionalities (it invokes Apple’s userability while Twitter reminds me of a functional PC), I find that for now Jaiku:

• - Lacks instant message (IM) integration / alerts;
• - For the U.S. audience, it is likely to have inconvenient down times since it is based in Helsinki; 
• - Certain American carriers are blocking Jaiku SMS alerts, a bug that the company is working through;
• - Though offering cool Growler and Quicksilver scripts for Mac users is applicable only to a niche Apple market

For my U.S.-centric clients, I would have to recommend Twitter, for now.  That said, the market is young and it is too risky to predict the future of either service—and that of emerging competitors.