Whither Twitter and Pownce in the Face of Jaiku-Google?

As Ewan broke the news this morning–Google Acquires Jaiku; Terms Not Disclosed–Jaiku is now part of the Googleplex.  My first thoughts on this were that Pownce is toast for sure and Twitter will have some serious competition and might have to start hoping on the innovation train to,  but then so will Jaiku, won’t they?

Is there room for Pownce and Twitter?
Let’s take Pownce first.  Yes, Pownce was the begging-to-get-invites service early on, but it hasn’t taken off like Twitter as the back channel for conferences and the blogosphere.  I have a Pownce account and frankly don’t update it often.  It competed for my attention with Twitter.  Granted the scope of Pownce is more interesting with messages, events, files, music as discrete classes of information.  Still, can’t get into it.  I don’t see a lot of buzz around Pownce or it being used for spreading the word quickly.  Could be wrong, of course.

As for Twitter, I participate and have both personal and blognation accounts, but it can escape my attention easily.  When I do follow Twitter, there is always the mix of the banal and fascinating–until their servers die again.  Twitter has the eye and love of the bloggerati for sure.  Looking for breaking news on Web 2.0…Twitter, not Techmeme or Digg is often the place to be, well if you follow the right folks, of course.

This begs the question, is there room for them in a Google-owned Jaiku world?  Yes, but they have a short window to act.

Jaiku freezes new accounts–chance for Twitter and Pownce?

As the news was breaking of Jaiku’s purchase my first thoughts were around the the fate of Twitter and Pownce.  And like I said at first blush–Pownce is toast, Twitter is in danger–but reading both the Jaiku and Google posts on the news I caught something that is preeminently important: Jaiku is freezing new accounts:

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.

But fear not, all our Jaiku services will stay running the way you are used to and you will be able to invite your friends to Jaiku. We have put together a quick Q&A about the acquisition. Source: Jaiku

Ah ha!  Remember JotSpot and Writely?  Remember how they froze new accounts when Google snapped them up?  Sure there was the buzz around trying and wanting to get in, but as time drug on, that was lost.  Other tools (like Zoho) came up and stole mindshare from Writely.

This is the chance for Pownce and Twitter.  If they can innovate quickly, add more capacity and capitalize on people hearing about Jaiku and not being able to try it (Twitter–Like Jaiku, but you can try it now.  Pownce–Microblogging you don’t have to wait for), then this Jaiku buzz could be leveraged in their favour.

Can Jaiku take the lead using Google’s power?

This is the big question isn’t it?  Sure I have a Jaiku account.  I’ve used it even less than my Pownce account.  Tempted to fire it up now?  Of course!  The key for me will be–can I condense Twitter (two accounts there), Pownce, and other info streams into Jaiku?  One of the strong suits of Jaiku is its ability to suck in your info streams from multiple sources and make them part of your single Jaiku stream.

What is it about Jaiku, though?  Why hasn’t it taken off as the backchannel?  Why isn’t there the rush to make the conference account that people follow (and be followed reciprocally)?

My gut feel is tools.  There are a ton of great Twitter tools out there (I like Twitterbar for Firefox a lot).

What’s out there for Jaiku?  Getting Jaiku into the Google Toolbar is going to be key as will releasing a barrage of tools to make it just dead easy to post.  Quickly followed by getting conferences to start using Jaiku for the backchannel stream.  If Jaiku can make that leap like Twitter did for SXSW, Gnomedex 7, and others … then the wind is at its back.

After it reopens to new accounts, that it.