Is Jaiku your Party Room?
Damien wrote a blog post about social networks today that has some interesting ideas on how people move from one network to another and how people make social networks not the technology that underlies them. He goes into how our mobile contact lists are the next untapped source for these networks and even goes on to mention the Jaiku S60 application which is ready to target this area. He does however do a bit of unnecessary Jaiku bashing given the interesting nature of his post.
“Jaiku is dead”
I pointed this out on Jaiku and the discussion that this sparked off, kind of descended into a Twitter vs Jaiku debate. He didn’t like that, and points out that his post wasn’t about Twitter verses Jaiku, but unfortunately that’s where the conversation happened to go on Jaiku as it so often does on both Jaiku and Twitter.
At one point @dantrevino says that Twitter is only for the socially inept. This lead @NiaLLLarkin to counter this point with a brilliant post on his blog where he compares social networking to a house party. I’m simplifying but he calls Twitter the busy, noisy, sitting room with the loud music, while Jaiku is the quiet kitchen.
What a great analogy I thought, but I have to disagree. For me Jaiku is my party room. Jaiku is where I meet new people. Jaiku is where I go for fun, to be distracted, to dance. In the few months that I have been on Jaiku I have connected with ten’s of people that I would have never meet otherwise, just like I would at party. I have even meet some of them in real life at parties since. On Twitter I don’t think I have connected with anyone that I didn’t have some form of existing connection to.
People do make social networks but where do find the people that make up your social network?
Where is your Party Room?
April 5th, 2008 at 12:35 pm
Of course one reason Jaiku may be quiet is that the door is mostly locked to newcomers so its potential critical mass/party is being built elsewhere ie twitter or staying where it is ie AIM.