Is Jaiku now a 20% time project?
There have been some reports going around that Jaiku is now just a 20% time project at Google. Arctic Startup reports that @teemu has said “currently Jaiku is being developed on the 20% free time Googlers have for their own projects.” He also goes on to talk about the port to Google App Engine and says that “this port will be done on “normal” working hours.”
After a little further digging into it I discovered this thread on Jaiku in Finnish which is talking about the talk that @teemu gave in a Helsinki University. The basic gist of it is some of the students talking about what @teemu had said. He then comes on to clear a few things up (sorry about the rough translation see the original here. Please correct me if it’s wrong.)
Let me correct some possible misunderstandings, Jaiku will continue its existence and Jaiku is being ported to the Google App Engine . Its porting will make the expansion of the user numbers possible in the future, so that joining without an invite will be possible. The Port is in part worked on full-time but we are also working in part on something new.
Andy @termie works full-time at the moment on the Jaiku port, I have smaller focus at the moment.
To me all this goes to lay further strength to the argument that Google mainly bought Jaiku for the developers and that we may see some sort of Jaiku-Android integration in the future. I wonder if we will see any of Jonathan Mulholland (@jonmul ) predictions coming true?