Jaiku To Shut Down In January
Google announced last Friday that they will be shutting down Jaiku and Buzz, which comes with little surprise as the web giant focuses its attention on its new social network, Google+.
Jaiku, the Helsinki based mobile social service that allowed you to send short updates to your friends, was acquired by Google in 2007. But after gaining over 40 million users on Google+, Google has shifted away from Jaiku, which never gained much traction after its initial core of users.
Ambadoo Is A Lot Like An Improved Jaiku For The iPhone
Ambadoo is a new iPhone app coming to you from Malmö, Sweden. The first impression of the service was that it reminds me a lot of Jaiku. But it is a lot better and nicer to use and it's also available for the iPhone. Just tells us how much Jaiku revolutionised the industry with its service, if it's still remembered so many years after Google shut it down.. Having said that - Ambadoo is very much something I could use on a day to day basis.
Seedcamp Launches Seedsummit, A Service To Find Active Early Stage Investors
Seedcamp has just announced earlier today about their launch of a new service, seedsummit, which is aimed to help startups find investors more easily. It's in short, the AngelList for the rest of us. Seedsummit has no specific geographic focus and it has angels listed from Africa, Asia, Europe, Nordics and Baltics to name a few. While there are only a few names listed, I'm sure it will supply a need in demand.
Huikea's iPad Game Is Just Around The Corner
Huikea is a Finnish iOS development startup that is developing a multiplayer game for the Apple iPad. The company co-founder Teemu Kurppa is one of the early employees of Jaiku and he co-founded the company together with Pekka Uronen back in 2009. They've now released some videos of the game as well as screenshots. A recent comment in Facebook revealed that the game is just around the corner and will be released soon.
Google States Jaiku Integration Failed
Anil Hansjee, the director in charge of Google's acquisitions, has given an interview to Swedish Dagens Industri about their recent acquisitions. In the interview Hansjee says that they've gone through their 70 recent acquisitions and how they've been able to integrate the business into Google's. One of the takeaways from the interview is that, they failed to integrate Jaiku into Google's strategy.
Thinglink Raises 1M USD From Inventure And Lifeline Ventures
Thinglink, a Finnish product tagging startup based in Helsinki/Palo Alto (see our previous coverage), has just announced it has raised USD 1 million in funding from Nordic Inventure and Lifeline Ventures. The funding will be used to develop in-image product advertising network for brands, retailers and other product advertisers. The firm's reference customers include the Scandinavian media house Aller, the Finnish Broadcasting Company YLE (Wenzel’s Antique Road Show), and interior design brand Artek.
The Next 100 Million Euro Business Might Come From Bootcamp
Aalto Venture Garage is putting together a busy two week program they call Bootcamp. Bootcamp is to be held four times a year and it's an intensive program aimed at speeding up already existing early stage ventures. The first Bootcamp is to be run between September 17th and 30th. They are now accepting applications, but be quick - the deadline is September 8th. A mentoring program wouldn't be anything without high profile mentors and well enough, Aalto Venture Garage has managed to secure a good lineup of Finnish startup professionals. Mind you, the program isn't only aimed at Finnish startups - it's open for everyone around the Baltic rim.
Location, Location, Location! Or Timing and Execution?
Remember Zipiko? The service with a "quick and effortless way to see what your friends are doing and a way to invite them to your chosen venue whether it’s it a local cafe or your own place for drinks, lunch or whatever you fancy."
Unfortunately the company that developed Zipiko, namely Zipipop, put the product development on ice already last June and moved on to service the growing Finnish enterprise customer base that is completely and utterly lost with social media wave that has hit the organizations. To scale their operations Zipipop, lead by its energetic CEO Helene Auramo, has teamed up with the former Managing Director of Accenture's Finnish and Nordic offices.
Richard von Kaufmann of Zipipop states in the company blog the following:
Two Years Is Up, Jaiku Founders Leave Google
We just heard yesterday that Jyri Engeström, Jaiku co-founder, is leaving his Product Manager job at Google after his two year earn out is up. Today Petteri Koponen, the other Jaiku co-founder announced that he is leaving Google and joining Lifeline Ventures, a Finnish startup accelerator that's part of the Vigo program (See our previous stories on Lifeline Venture here and here).
This not such a big jump as Petteri worked at Google in a wide variety of roles that gave him an ideal view into what was happening in the market. First Petteri worked at the Android product team and subsequently on Google's New Business team, which continuously searches for and works with startups that partner with Google. It's exciting to follow how the Vigo program evolves. At least Lifeline Ventures seem to be already hard at work. Petteri told me that they have already done some investments even though the whole program is just coming together.
Mindtrek's First Day - Full Of Variety
Check, check... mike working, reporting from the Mindtrek conference from Tampere where some 800 people are networking, discussing internet and digital media at large. The day has been action packed and there has been a lot of different content to consume. Furthermore, the audience saw some top notch speakers at Mindtrek this year, especially Chris Messina and Jyri Engeström, who were keynote speakers continuing on the post they wrote for ArcticStartup earlier.
The day began with a keynote by Chris Messina. He talked about identity as a platform. Judging on the amount of comments from people on the aisles in the conference, Chris hit top on with his presentation. Although there were some illogicalities, which he admits, it's always great to hear news from The Valley on the trends that are pumping there.
Jaiku Co-founder Joins Aito Board - A Win For The Ecosystem
Petteri Koponen (see video below), co-founder of Jaiku and First Hop, joins Aito Technologies board. Koponen, who currently works at Google after Jaiku's acquisition by Google in October 2007 has a long experience from media and telecom from his years. Aito Technologies is a Finnish Customer Experience Management (CEM) solution provider for mobile operators and digital service providers.
Along with Koponen's nomination Aito Technologies announced also the nomination of Antti Viitanen to its board of directors.
Qaiku.com - YAJC (Yet Another Jaiku Clone)
Eero Holmila, CEO of Rohea showed me Qaiku.com a few weeks back when it was still in closed beta. Now it seems to have opened up to open beta and is accepting registrations. With services such as Qaiku, Twitbear, Bloggy and others being created it shows that the vacuum created by Jaiku's downtime has created a new market for microblogging. The downside for the community of course is that the whole market is now very fragmented and thus the value in each new service is lower to the individual from the network point of view.
Nevertheless, let's have a look at Qaiku.com - it's one of the best clones of Jaiku out there, I must say. It's still got some issues however. For example, you have to know Finnish to change the language at the front page to English, it's hidden there in the drop down menu. Once you sign after registration it's very similar to the Jaiku user interface. In addition to taking the best of Jaiku, there are small new improvements which in my opinion are very welcome. One of these is the possibility to see different statistics on the right hand side, along with favorite items, friends and channels, all in one place.
Furthermore, there are small tabs below the "new qaiku" -box, qaikus, stream, channels, friends, radar and favorites. Qaikus shows your new qaikus in one place where as the stream shows all qaikus and comments in one stream. Channels and friends tabs list your channels and friends, respectively. Radar is the twitter like feature where someone mentions you with @username, it will be shown on that page.
Even though the development of Qaiku is still in its very early stages, it is showing some nice results already. Qaiku lists a development list on its front page and I'm glad APIs are in the top spot. One of the reasons Twitter was able become so successful was its open attitude towards third party developers - a ton of new value added applications were built around Twitter, all increasing its usage.
The big question mark is though, will it pick up and will the tired Jaiku herds want to migrate once more to a new service now that Twitter has finally taken a relatively strong foothold in the Nordics. Remains to be seen, I haven't managed to adopt it just yet.
Follow ArcticEvening Via Twitter
We understand that not all of you could not make it to the ArcticEvening tonight for one reason or another. Many also wanted to come, but due to the size of the venue we had to limit the number of tickets we gave out. We issued as many tickets as we could and the place is going to be absolute packed, so be prepared! If you were left out don't worry, not all is lost. You can follow what goes down during the night via a Twitter feed (see below), or a Jaiku channel (here).
If you're coming and decide the Twitter from the event do type #arcticevening hash tag at the end of your tweets and they will appear on the stream below. Thanks.
#arcticevening on Twitter:
PauseSponsors
Our event is made available by our Sponsors. Do take time to get to know them - they are one of the most interesting organisations in the industry. We hand pick our sponsors to bring value to the evenings - these guys are truly worth your time.
Sombiz
Sombiz is a Social Media Business Network of Finnish social media & Web 2.0 companies, research institutions, and other organisations and individuals operating in the field of social media.
Sombiz provides a network for organisations to collaborate, learn from each other, and create partnerships. By connecting business with research Sombiz is stimulating the creation of new innovations. The ultimate goal for Sombiz is to find new business opportunities and help companies to grow and go international.
Sombiz operates as a thematic network of the Finnish Digibusiness Cluster and is a part of the government funded Centre of Expertise Programme (OSKE). In 2008 the building of the Sombiz network was selected as the national "OSKE Top Project". The project is funded by the Ministry of Employment and the Economy.
The background organisation of Sombiz is Technology Centre Hermia Ltd.
Sombiz is a Finnish-based network operating internationally. The strategy of Sombiz is a "BUGC" approach: linking Business, Universities, Government, and Communities in order to build and boost the social media business ecosystem.
Hammarström Puhakka Partners
Hammarström Puhakka Partners, Attorneys Ltd is a law firm specialised in business law. The firm has a good corporate practice with experienced M&A advisers acting constantly for domestic and cross-border clients. Specialists provide M&A services to public and private companies relating to assignments concerning private equity and venture capital transactions. The firm is constantly involved with complex transactions in connection with private equity firms and experienced in advising private equity/venture capital investors in divesting their investments.
Vera Venture
Veraventure Ltd is a public venture capital company making investments in innovative Finnish enterprises at their early stages. Veraventure is fully owned by its parent company Finnvera Plc.
Twitbear Defies Twitter With Commenting
Three Finnish Jaiku fans have created a service called Twitbear that describes itself as "enabling conversations around tweets". Antti Akonniemi, CEO of Kisko Labs, Kai Lemmetty, co-founder of Floobs and Helene Auramo, CEO of Zipipop came up with the service after Jaiku had started crashing fairly often after Google announced it would pull the plug from it las January.
The service itself is based around threaded communication and is currently in closed beta. At the moment, it pulls tweets from Twitter and adds the comments to the service itself - enabling the threaded communication that many other services have tried to pull off, inluding Tweetree. In essence it is a microblogging platform that pulls part of its data from Twitter. According to the creators of Twitbear - services like Friendfeed are too manyfold and difficult to use, something that many former Jaiku fans can agree with, I'm sure.
Only a handful of users have received invitations to the service and each registered user is given 5 invitations to share. It's nice to still see innovation around threaded conversations, something that remains to be tackled with a proper service. Jaiku had a good try at it, but with Google buying the service - development came to a halt. I've personally noticed many Finns beginning to use Brightkite, a service similar to Jaiku. It remains to be seen which will be the service that will take off outside Twitterdom - or do we need one?
Twingly Sees The Forest From The Trees With Microblog Search
Twingly announced yesterday that they have launched a microblogging search engine that can search across the most used microblogging services; Twitter, Jaiku, Pownce, Identi.ca and lots more.
What makes this a game changer in my opinion is that Twingly has created the microblog search engine for the rest of the world. Fair enough, Twitter is the de facto microblog and it has gained a lot of traction even in the Nordics, there is still quite a bit of potential in the other platforms especially for corporate users. Martin Kallström, the CEO, confirmed to Michael Arrington of TechCrunch integration with FriendFeed is on the way - one of the most popular threaded microblogs around.
Twingly's microblog search works exactly the same way as does their normal blog search. A simple black search field and results that you can vote on to give relevance points to the most approriate blog posts. In essence, if you think of it - Twingly has integrated the wiki search that Google is still playing with into their product's core.
What I mean by the title of the blog post is the fact that when you are looking for conversations on certain keywords, you want to be able to search all conversations - not limit it to a single service. Search engines and filters to seek the relevant content will become more and more important in the future for corporations looking into ways to tap into customer dialogue. If Twingly is able to package this in an appealing way to the corporations wanting to tap into the groundswell, they could have an easily capitalisable product on their hands.
Microblogging hotter than ever – Bloggy.se launches public beta
While Twitter is hitting a new heat wave, Friendfeed just won the Crunchie Award for the Best New Startup 2008, and dear Jaiku keeps struggling with its maintenance issues, and just announced going open source!, what better time than to bring a new player into the field - Bloggy.se.
Bloggy is a Swedish microblogging service in Swedish, and a one-man show by Jonas Lejon. It all started for eight months ago as a free time project alongside with full time job and a newborn baby. (And then I haven't even mentioned a bunch of other web services Jonas has in his portfolio.) He had been a frequent user of both Jaiku, Twitter and Pownce (recently closed down) but wasn’t too pleased with any of them. He also wanted to bring microblogging to the non-tech savvy crowds, so he picked out the goodies from the other services and molded them into Bloggy.se.
On September 25th last year the first closed beta invitations were given to the Swedish Jaiku community and the reactions were immediate. Speculations on whether Bloggy was going to take over Jaiku were raised. (In Swedish)
The service was well received, as some of the first comments by couple of heavy Jaiku users can tell:
(Translated from Swedish)
- "Thought I was going to call it an early night but happened to stumble in here. Having a crush...:) " @mymlansofia
- “Testing Bloggy.se. Extremely impressed by Jonas Lejon.” @tedvalentin
- ”Bloggy.se is the first serious candidate to threaten Jaiku within "the Bubble" (Jaiku user group) (OMG, what am I saying? I, who can't live without Jaiku)”. @morris
Jonas has been a true crowd surfer since the start, and he continuously keeps asking their advice on both logo design and future features. Bloggy uses Get Satisfaction as the customer service and support tool.
Today, four months later, Bloggy has over one thousand users and growing. The Swedish industry bloggers have listed Bloggy as one of the highlights of the year, and even called it the microblog service of the year. (Both articles in Swedish)
So, what is under the Bloggy hood?
A Bloggy user gets an easy-to-follow user interface with threaded posts and comments, customized profile design, lifestreaming by adding feeds and all standard update (mobile, SMS, MMS) and notification (Jabber/Gtalk, email) features. Bloggy has support for updating both Twitter and Jaiku statuses. At the moment Bloggy is the only microblogging service in Sweden offering outgoing SMS updates (only on incoming SMS). Posts has standardized length of 140 characters, but like Jaiku the comment length is unlimited, a feature that encourages conversations. Bloggy users find new friends and topics on the main page that shows the public feed with current new members and a tag cloud with popular words.
It also offers the "I like/heart" feature, as part of the service itself, as does Friendfeed. There are now rumors about the similar feature on Facebook. Bloggy has support for geolocation services such as FireEagle and Geode, and there is naturally an API for developers.
According to Jonas himself the users have been especially happy about the automatically updated and threaded posts and comments (Ajax implementation). Jonas himself is most proud of the quick response times of the service, alongside the fact that Bloggy already contains almost all the functionality of the other microblogging platforms.
Unique to Bloggy is all the different file upload formats it supports (.JPG, .PNG, .GIF, AVI, MPG, 3GP, .MP3), all up to 20Mb. The user can also upload images via MMS (Friendfeed has Mail2FF).
The service differs from Twitter, Friendfeed and Jaiku in two ways: The user can't choose to be private, only public profiles are supported. It is also possible for anyone to leave a comment without being a registered user.
When now launching (In Swedish) in public beta, Jonas has added more features into Bloggy. It is now possible to update your status using Hello.txt and ping.fm, services that make life easier for those who want to update all their social networks at once. If you rather hang out on GTalk/Jabber all day, you no longer need to leave it to update your Bloggy status, there's support for it, too.
Is there a future for Bloggy?
Microblogging and social networks, as we have come to know, are all about where one's friends are, but with Bloggy filled with lots of functionality, channels on the way and continuous improvement of the user experience, I think "There is likely plenty of room in the niche and custom communities precisely because Twitter is purely public" as Rob Diana on louisgray.com so well argues. Why? For example, I've already noticed the use of #svpt (Swedes on Twitter) hash tag on Twitter just to track other Swedes and Swedish conversations. It's a jungle out there and the need to hang out with your own people and alikes is very strong.
Google Ceases Development of Jaiku, Open Sources Platform
Google announced that they're closing or ceasing development of variety of services, including Jaiku.
As mentioned eariler, Jaiku has been in process of porting to Google App Engine and there have been some rumours of opening the Jaiku platform. Official release now states that Jaiku Engine will be open sourced under the Apache Licence, and supported by volunteer team of Googlers.
This probably means that Google will not have any plans of integrating or bringing Jaiku to other platforms like Android. Jaiku will transform into a general microblogging platform and the open source efforts will help keeping Jaiku.com development alive. Other than that, this is a huge hit on the Jaiku.com community, brand and service. There are benefits of building platforms, but usually a more intense community is not one of them.
Jyri Engeström, co-founder of Jaiku and now a Googler, stated in recent Jaiku discussion (1, 2) that current schedule for release is during this spring.
It will be also intresting to see what kind of changes App Engine will need to run the full feature set of Jaiku.
Will The Future iTunes Look Like Spotify?
Here's a Jaiku thread from last night (GMT +2) that basically outlines what the future of the worldwide music consuption might very well look like sooner than we think. The tread started when after Apple's announcement Jaiku Co-founder Jyri Engeström posed a questing to the Jaiku community "Wondering if DRM-free iTunes will affect Spotify's appeal"
Here's are some of the interesting thougths and ideas that were expressed. Pay especially attention to what Jyri concludes at the end of Spotify Co-founder Daniel Ek's answer. You can see the whole thread here.
Jyri Engeström: What does going drm-free tell us about Apple's future strategic direction for iTunes? I don't think it's out of the question that the future iTunes a little way down the road will look a lot like Spotify. If that was the case, where would it leave Spotify?Daniel Ek, Spotify Co-Founder: Thanks for caring Jyri. I just think there's a fundamental difference right now between us. iTunes is still about ownership and will still only work out of the box with iPod. It's not like they've enabled support for a bunch of new devices. We on the other hand is more about an access model and the future will tell if we will go the Apple way and have a closed system, or actually open up to a variety of use cases ;-)
[...]
Daniel Ek, Spotify Co-Founder: @jyri: You know, a wise man talked about social objects cough ;-). We think music data is social objects, and we focus on building tools around them. We don't necessarily want to be a social network ourselves. That's also a hint on the future :)
Adawale Oshineye: Let's look at the financial aspects. Spotify's premium account is £9.99 * 12 months. Apple won't go after Spotify's market unless they're making less than £120 per average user per year from Itunes.
The other big question is regarding Apple's long term aspirations:
- Option 1: they want lots of people (on the order of 100s of millions) buying lots of very cheap items from Apple. This has the advantage of being the same as their iPhone application strategy and lets them exploit economies of scale which would make it hard for anyone to compete with them. The bigger the market place the more customers you attract and the more customers the more likely people are to want to sell their products in your market place.
- Option 2: they want lots of people (on the order of 10s of millions) to move to a subscription model for their music. This number is smaller than the first number as subscription requires a bigger commitment and that kind of commitment is likely to lose them some of the market. This has the benefit of a nice stable stream of revenue but fewer barriers to entry. Anyone can set up an equivalent subscription service (once they've got the record companies on board) and the only lock-in is the minimal length of the subscription contract.
I think the record industry would like option 2 as they'd still have the power to take away their music from the users of any subscription service that didn't play by their rules.I think Apple are ambitious enough to seek option 1 as it potentially gives them control over a huge market in very cheap digital content: games, apps, music, ringtones, photos, micropayments for online services, etc. The systems they would need to make this work for music and iphone apps+games can be adapted fairly easily to lots of other small transactions once they've got their users comfortable with paying for things with their phone. The Japanese mobile phone market is a clear example of how this scenario can play out.
Jyri Engeström: @eldsjal I think I understand your approach fairly well although it's been a while since we discussed it -- which goes to show you're not visiting us often enough :)
As I recall pointing out before, Spotify's success against iTunes is affected to a significant degree by how well it can exploit the fact that Apple (awkwardly) wears two hats.
To be more precise, the interests of Apple the device manufacturer and Apple the online distributor are fundamentally misaligned. It's in the device manufacturer's interest to keep iTunes proprietary to the iPod; whereas it's in the online distributor's interest to sell music through as many channels as possible.
In the end this is a business equation. As long as Apple makes more money from devices, iTunes is likely to stay proprietary. But if the iTunes store grows into the de facto cash cow, or the iPod starts to lose market share, friction is bound to arise between the two units.
It's in Spotify's interest, therefore, that the iPod does well but not too well. Apple has to be compelled to keep iTunes proprietary, but worldwide sales of music players has to include a significant percentage of players that do not have iTunes. Spotify then has a shot at becoming the de facto music distribution platform 'for the rest of us'. Of course it'll face tough competition from other proprietary and open initiatives.
[...]
Jyri Engeström: @adewale I believe you're correct in that there are two business models, freemium subscription & per-item sales; however, they are not mutually exclusive. Of course Apple's not going to abandon sales of music tracks for ad-supported subscriptions. But it could easily add a free streaming/subscription mode to support its per-item sales (bait-and-switch like @oscar mentioned).
Daniel Ek, Spotify Co-Founder: +1 on @jyri :)
Jyri Engeström: @eldsjal reading the tealeaves from your "+1": the complementary nature of subscriptions and track sales means Spotify could just as well become iTunes ;)
Not only was this an interesting conversation on the future of worldwide music consuption and the direction of Spotify is heading, but this Jaiku conversation thread is also yet another evident that Jaiku is so much more than Twitter when it comes to conversations. Twitter surely has it's streghts, but Jaiku enables different kinds of communication. We need to have both(!), and as soon as Jaiku opens itself as well as its improved API to the public we will. Having Jaiku and Twitter sitting next to each other in a Tweetdeck would seriously change the way we communicate.
Twitter Moving Towards Jaiku?
The latest storm from the world of Nordic microblogging got me thinking a lot about Jaiku, Twitter, FriendFeed, the microblogging in general and the Open Stack that's trying to open up the silos, not just in microblogging, but the social web in large. We are looking into reaching the point where, just as Jyri Engeström put it, "[n]o single service, no matter how large and powerful, is the platform. The Web is the platform"
Now Many have realized that Twitter, which was competing head on with Jaiku and has won that race for now, should allow the service to develop towards what Jaiku did right when it launched, namely enable conversations. I believe those two services are different and perhaps should remain so and just talk to each other via open standards such as XMPP or an XMPP equivalent. Therefore I am not advocating Twitter becoming more Jaiku-like. Twitter should have its own future trajectory. What I am very strongly advocating is for the heavy users of FriendFeed and Twitter to start using Jaiku, the one service that does what services and apps using Twitter API are increasingly trying to do. TweeTree being the most recent example of that. Do I have a vested intrested in this? You can bet on it! I strongly believe Jaiku is a better service to engage in meaningful conversations and I am in Jaiku, but many people I would like to converse with are not.
Below Chris Messina below outlines his vision on where he sees activity streams going. He notes that activity streams need a "[l]ocation and context attached to or as attributes of social objects that are being created" and not just a lonely tweet which is not connected to anything. As Chris mentions in the video below [8min 27 sec into it], this is where Jaiku started from. Now we just need to get Google to realize the value it has in Jaiku and let Jyri & Co. to develop Jaiku further by incorporating filtering (by actor, action, social object, place, time, etc.), fast feed fetching, opening it up for the world to use and develop and voilá. Compare this to the #hashtags, which is about the only thing you can use to put your Tweet into a relevant context. This is really nothing but a poor hack compared to what Jaiku already can do for the conversations.
Talking Social Network Interop @ GSP East from Brian Oberkirch on Vimeo.
Since we are not yet living in a world where all the silos are broken and all the services can talk to each other, I think the Silicon Valley digerati should pull their heads from the California sand, see beyond their Valley bubble and give (yet again) Jaiku collectively a try to realize its value instead of complaining how the Twitter-cum-Jaiku attempts don't work. Yes it's closed, but the invitations are unlimited and I'm sure most of the microblogging heavy users already have an account. If not, I will personally send an invitation to anyone asking for one (you can email me at ville [at] arcticstartup.com). Twitter has the critical mass, but Jaiku still kicks its ass any day as a service to have meaningful conversations in. Since Twitter is not going to become Jaiku any time soon we all should give Jaiku another try. Struggling with two services is a drag, but things are changing fast, and once the users are there, Jaiku and Twitter can complement each other until the two services can openly talk to each other - or until a better option emerges.
Jaiku needs its critical mass and it needs to grow to become truly relevant to link people globally. I am advocating people to move there not only because I or some other people are there, but for the purposes of having conversations, it is a far better service than Twitter or FriendFeed. We should see and use the two services as the different services that they are, just as Eat.fi's founder @Spongefile commented here:
Jaiku is like a constant huge cocktail party hosted by your friends with interesting conversations to drop in on with semi-strangers.Twitter is like getting constant voicemail from everyone you know. You can reply via the same method, but that's no way to communicate.
So how about it Scoble? While we wait for the silos to come down, shall I send you a Jaiku invite?
Jaiku Picks Up. Android Integration Soon In The Plans?
We recently wrote about Jaiku losing users and subsequently got strong response from the Jaiku community telling us differently. Partly the reason why some users (link in Finnish) have moved to Twitter was Jaiku's feature pack was seriously couching: feeds not coming through and SMS messages were disabled.
Soon after Jaiku community stood up for their service the Jaiku team also woke up and already the next day feeds were back up, even if still a bit slow, and today SMS was also reactivated. The community effectively made itself heard and it worked at least to some extent.
There's also new feature's coming for example regarding the API that supports OAuth, but the gravest of the concerns' has yet to be answered by the Jaiku team, namely when are we going to see these changes happen and especially where is the service going.
Jyri Engeström commented in Jaikido blog way back in August when Jaiku was being ported to Google App Engine, "We appreciate your patience and can’t wait to open up Jaiku to everyone", but is Google's corporate wheel too slow to turn and is Google's silence policy regarding it's products development slowly pushing the Jaiku community's patience one step too far?
The same Jaikido blog entry talks about how 3rd party developers will have greater control over the system and can write applications that provide richer features to their users. This clearly shows that there are plans for the future. One could even speculate that Google has all along had a clear plan on what they are going to do with Jaiku. As Antti Akonniemi speculates, " Jaiku’s location based and phone profile features pre-installed on Google phones could change everything."
Now, if one wants to see this happening one easily could: Petteri Koponen has been working especifically on Android in Google's London office, while Jyri Engeström is in Mountainview working on Google's strategy for the social web. Has Google just waited until Android is ready to ramp up Jaiku development? Then again, last April Teemu Kurppa told (In Finnish) the Finnish crowd that Jaiku was being developed on the Google's infamous "20% time". Google would hardly make developers develop the corner stone of it's mobile strategy on their 'extra 20%'. Or would it? Jyri's silence despite the lively conversation and many requests regarding an update on what's happening could indicate that something's up.
This is not a new idea, but could the time start to be ripe for the launch as Jaiku's porting to Google App Engine is nearly finished which allows a rapid uptake of new users, and as Android is fully functioning and just starting to go after market share?
Edit 17.12.2008 at 3.36pm: Jyri Engeström posted today a new blog post in his blog where he carefully tells us about the future of Jaiku. Among other updates he says that "I regard the Jaiku community as friends, and your concern about the future of the service is legitimate. It warrants a response."
To indicate what is to come, he goes on by saying that they "[...]plan to open up its development to the user community more in the future." and that "People should be able to post and follow status updates across servers just like they send email. No single service, no matter how large and powerful, is the platform. The Web is the platform."
The best indication on what's to come is at the end of the blog post. I quote: "In spite of the decision to not throw resources at building Jaiku into an independent Web brand, recall that the acquisition announcement stated that 'Activity streams and mobile presence are important areas where we believe Google can add a lot of value for users.' Of course this statement still holds true, and you can bet your Android that there are completely new Wow!'s in store."
At ArcticStartup we believe that we will soon see something that involves Jaiku's microblogging model, Android and the Open Stack nicely mixed into a working solution for those handset manufacturers that decide to take upon Google's open offer.
Finnish Jaiku Community Fights Back. Hard!
I recently wrote about the Finnish Jaiku community moving to Twitter en mass. This got the community on barricades ready to defend their service teeth and nail against my claim. What is interesting here is the intensity with which the community defended its service against my argument and choice of words. They even came after me on ArcticStartup's journalistic standards. I got the same treatment as TheNextWeb contributing editor Zee M Kane, even if for different reasons. After the points have been made it is up to each and every individual to make their own judgement regarding the issue. The comment tread is here and a Jaiku thread here (In Finnish).
Regardless whether the wording was misleading or not, and I'm ready to pull my weight and stand behind the argument I made, what is true is that even if users are leaving Jaiku the service is not dead by no means given the resistance and passion ArcticStartup just witnessed. The users send a loud and clear message that, the ones that are staying with the service are really sticking up for their tight-knit community despite Twitter's or anyone else's international dominance.
This makes me very proud to be a fellow Finn as it probably does make the Jaiku founders Jyri Engeström and Petteri Koponen. They have all the reason to be proud with a community like this. I have never witnessed the power of online community this close, even though some examples across the Atlantic like Facebook Beacon come to mind. Now we only have to make Sergei Brin and Larry Page to understand what kind of dynamic community they are letting to fade. The only wish that the Jaiku community has is to know what is about to happen to their service. @jyri, do you hear us?
Image by Tambako the Jaguar (CC: by-nd)
Finland Finally Moving To Twitter
There has been a dynamic and active Jaiku community in Finland even after the service got acquired by Google in October 2007. Google acquisition has many times meant a kiss of death to many startups. The Jaiku community strongly believed Jaiku would be an exception. At least until now it did.
Among the Finnish Jaiku community there was talk about migrating to Twitter, a US based micro-blogging site, already a while back when Jaiku was down but yesterday (Link in Finnish) I saw people abandoning the ship in bigger numbers than ever before.
Why I believe this might really be the kiss of death to the Finnish born Jaiku is because I just recently shifted my own usage to become Twitter heavy without knowing about the mass exodus here in Helsinki. This is not due to one service being superior to the other, but due to something as simple as the network effect I got to witness at LeWeb in Paris. So many of my friends outside of Finland are having conversations that are relevant to me in Twitter that I can not afford to not be there.
Before I was adamant that Jaiku is a better service, but now I have come to believe that it's just different. Where as in Jaiku the users can have long discussions threads (think Gmail), which makes the short postings just starting points of the long winding conversations, in Twitter you can't but Tweet 140 characters at a time, making the latter service truly more limited. But the beaty of Twitter, I believe, is exactly the limitation and the fact that since it's limited it scales as a consumable vast stream of information, which you can mold according to your own preferences. In this I mean you can build your own personal filter for the vast amount of information that is generated daily in the web, thus effectively eliminating the spam and following not just what people are explicitly saying but also feeds from news services, blogs, so on and so forth. Leo Laporte just recently touched on the same topic in This Week in Tech. Laporte was also one of the first Silicon Valley luminaries who declared Jaiku as a better service than Twitter.
The mass exodus in Finland has been mainly attributed to the downsides and difficulties that Jaiku is currently having, for example feeds not coming through and a disabled SMS service, but I believe that the bigger reason why Jaiku would eventually lose the race even here in Finland is the potential upside in communicating with the whole world instead of just with other Finns and the odd faithfull foreigner still using the service. That said, Jyri Engeström and Petteri Koponen built an amazing service and I still hope I see a mass exodus from Twitter back to Jaiku even though I don't believe that happens.
Joi Ito Is Still Investing, Despite Downturn
I had a chat in LeWeb with Joi Ito of Neoteny. He is also the CEO of Creative Commons and on board of numerous companies and non profits. Joi, like other investors in LeWeb, are still investing despite the downturn but like he said - it's easier to make out the better companies from the noise in times of economic crisis. He also has some tips for Nordic and Baltic companies, so do have a look.
Teemu Kurppa Is Leaving Google
Teemu Kurppa, a mobile software developer and a member of the founding team of the activity stream and micro-blogging service Jaiku, is leaving Google. He joined Google with the rest of the Jaiku team when Google acquired the startup in October 2007.
In his blog, Teemu tells that the main driver for his departure was an illness in his family which subsequently brings him back to Helsinki, Finland. However, he is up beat about seeing his loved ones back in Helsinki and also mysteriously comments that: "on work related matters, I’ve some exciting plans. More about these later".
ArcticStartup wishes the best to Teemu and his family and excitedly expects whether Teemu will set up a new mobile startup when he moves back to Helsinki. Welcome back to the Arctic region Teemu!
How To Break From The Arctic Region
I've lately had many discussion on how the break from the Nordics & Baltics and make one's service or product really global. Just recently I had this discussion here at Nordkapp where I work, so it does not only concern software products but equally all the service provides with international ambitions.
For a technology startup this question focuses many times on the issue of whether they should pack their bags and move to the Silicon Valley or whether they should build a strong user base first at home. Another viable option might be to reach out to London, but then again, many think that will only slows you down in your quest to global market share and you should head straight to the eye of the storm where the battle for the critical masses are fought.
This is more of a ongoing conversation than something that can be answered with a clear Yes or No, but here are some thoughts to start with:
- If you know which market you want to get to think about getting a board member, an advisory board member or an investor from the market. Instead of trying to bombard firms operating in the given market with a requests for shallow partnerships or just opening an office there, by aligning someone's interest with yours ie. giving them a stake in your success you can instantly tab into their network of contacts. These people already know who are the people you don't want to work with, because even though someone might have a nice resume they also might have a bad reputation among the local players, which would make your market entry a disaster. And vice versa: They know exactly who are the perfect partners for you and you don't end up taking the one you happen to know from a Trade Show two years ago. To get these people on board you need to focus, do your research on who is the right fit with you, work hard, dedicate time to it and make the offer really worth their time.
- For any consumer technology startup, don't just visit US and get a sales guy in there. Move there permanently for a few years if that's the market you aim for. And if you're building the next consumer web service, that is most likely the market you should aim for to get the traction over competitors. That said, you should still cultivate your network back at home so you can also benefit from that and link other firms from back home to your new contacts. This goes for the time of high growth when you're just building your product, but especially for the time after you have made your millions. You can have a huge advantage by having a network in both ends whether you start another startup or decide turn into an investor.
- When choosing an investor, you want to be careful for not choosing some small local fund, because they might actually limit your company to reach its full potential since they'll hold you back in fearing that they might get squeezed out in the later investing rounds. Also, since cycle times for an exit are growing (what was an exit in 5 years, looks more like an exit in 8 years now) you need a big enough fund that can follow up without running out of money.
- Same goes for advisory board members: Some people active in the Finnish startup scene have voiced their concern about the quality of people present in many of the more informal investor get-togethers. You don't want some former technology company middle manager from the early 90's influencing your vision, because they advice you to take the path they are familiar with which more often than not is something different from going global from day one.
- Even though Silicon Valley is the epicenter of much of the activity in the consumer technology startup world don't only look at the US. Do see how fertile ground India, China or Asia might be for your product. When they all start to look good, remember to choose your battles. As a startup you have very limited resources and if you'd like to push through you need to focus your efforts.
What else should a startup consider when trying to go international?
Here's Jaiku founders' advice on how to choose between London and the Silicon Valley when building a successful startup (original post here)
Photo by oskay (CC:BY).
First Impression Of Nokia Friend View
I'm playing with the Nokia's new service Nokia Friend View as I type this. I downloaded the software on my phone this morning and been using it through out the day.
In short the service wants to be a location aware microbloggin service.
I'm not blown away, nor have I completely lost hope with Nokia. They are trying fairly hard. The service is very Nokia-like in that it's not very user friendly compared to some others that have emerged from the west coast of US. The UI is rather ugly and after you start using it feels that someone has designed it on paper, but never really used it herself as it's not logical all the way through. Similarly the service is still very buggy, not loading the map on the web browser, eating one's battery in no time ...the list goes on and has still some really retarded features like the fact that the nick name is case sensitive. I registered as villevesterinen and now wondering whether there will be another VilleVesterinen. Does not really help you finding your friends from the service if there's two of each name.
I won't go into the nitty gritty, data portability etc. yet as Nokia is still in developing the service and I haven't used it long enough to get down and dirty with the features. Similarly, I won't go into how it could be integrated with Nokia Chat and the Ovi.com service in general for the simple reason that I don't use Ovi.com, since it only replicates other services I use like Flickr and MobileMe. Who knows, maybe Friend View lures me to use all of Nokia's services, but I'm not there yet. Nor is Nokia for that matter.
It's not all downhill though and this, after all, is still an early Beta. I don't know how my Nokia Friend View usage will evolve and where it becomes the most useful. I'd imagine I'd like to use it when I'm traveling and planning to meet people in a city at a given time. It would be very nice to see where their train is coming or see their plane above the Atlantic, but there's still a bit go before that. That said, it would be nice to see when my girlfriend is coming from work and see when she's just behind the corner or if she hasn't left from the office yet. But as many (In Finnish) communicated, they'd like to be able to control the level of privacy between the different contacts. The more of these services advance, the more privacy they invade. Nevertheless, I can find uses for the service already.
The sad part of this new service is that Nokia once had 'the next big thing' right in front of it: Jaiku was build right on Nokia's front porch and is doing much of what Nokia Friend View tries to do without the location bit. Add location to Jaiku and Voilà! One of Jaiku's co-founders and the father of the idea, Jyri Engeström, even worked at Nokia at one time, but of course it was too risky for the mobile phone giant at the time: It could not possibly put its weight behind a venture that is not already ubiquitous like microbloggin services now. That would be risky, which does not go very well with the Finnish management ideology. To make the irony complete Jaiku conversation threads are currently the best places to find out about how the Friend View works (or does not work in many cases), and Jaiku is still better service than Nokia Friend View, Twitter, Plazes and FriendFeed combined.
Now that Nokia has found the new focus for its strategy from the online services arena to go along with the hardware business, it should also embrace the new ways of working. Jaiku went to Google and nothing wrong with that, but if Nokia wants to be an innovative player in the online services field it needs to embrace different kinds of risks compared to ones it has before. This does not deal with mobile phone design, but rather with new behavior in communication as the web evolves. This risk involves betting on smart people, but not in a way Nokia has done before. I'm not talking about hard core MBA heavy hitters that can manage the hell out of any firm, but rather people who are the real pirates of the Internet. I'm talking about entrepreneurs.
Nokia needs to look at how Google has approached this issue by acquiring early stage startups and getting a boat load of smart people along with it. Nokia should start seeing the value in these energetic and smart people who want to change the way we communicate and won't stop until they do.
Similarly, Stefan Constantinescu, who's telling about the service in the YouTube clip made by Nokia, is also one of the best evangelist Nokia could hope for as the guy is super active and vocal in for example Jaiku. Let's hope that Nokia has learned its lesson and sees the value in what Stefan is doing and tunes into the Jaiku channels for community feedback.
Is Nokia Buying Zipiko?
I received several phone calls yesterday where I was asked about what is happening at Nokia and whether they are buying the Finnish SMS based social intention broadcasting application Zipiko.
The whole thing started when the Zipiko gang shared a taxi from the Nokia House located in Espoo, Finland with Prashant Agarwal, The director of Product Strategy at Fjord. Prashant Jaikued about it where it was picked up by the Jaiku co-founder Petteri Koponen who proposed that Nokia is about to acquire the small company.
This was enough to start a chain reaction in the Finnish social media and got it really boiling which 
eventually reached US and at that point it had already crossed over from Jaiku to Twitter. Co-incidentally the Zipiko servers where down just at the time that US was waking up and checking their Twitter feeds for the morning. All this would imply that Zipiko.com had received enough traffic, ignited by the news from the taxi ride, that their servers couldn't handle it anymore .
Just a week earlier I had been watching Zipiko lead developer's presentation on Google App Engine that they are using. Knowing that they use the App Engine lets me figure out exactly the amount of traffic that the service received to go down. Google App Engine manages up to 5 million views per month before letting the service go down. Now, that would be a rather remarkable amount of traffic ignited globally by just Jaiku and Twitter messages.
This makes would make a very interesting story if the protagonist herself, the Zipipop* CEO Helene Auramo, wouldn't have admitted to me that the juicy rumor was just that, a rumor. Also their service was down from some unrelated reason. So it seems that Nokia is not yet going after this Finnish startup.
But the question remains: What did Zipiko do in the Nokia house in the first place?
*Zipiko is an app made by Zipipop and has part of the company working exclusively on it.
The European Landscape For Startups
Occasionally we intentionally divert from our primary focus on reviewing and reporting on internet and mobile software startups and growth entrepreneurship in and from the Nordic and Baltic countries to examine the European, the Baltic and the Nordic landscape for the entrepreneurs. Here's another take on the issue.
Dirk Van Quaquebeke, the founder of Tailor Nation (Facebook app here), talked to me about his experiences on running a startup while working at the same time in Deutsche Bank, where to set up your startup and whether London is the startup hub you should go to as an entrepreneur.
When I asked what would he do if given the chance to do a startup anywhere, Dirk said 1) do an MBA in IIM in India (given one is a business guy). 2) While at it build a team around you since you get access to the great talent pool while in India. 3) Given there's three founders, one stays offshore production center at India 4) pay people well & even incentivize some through equity 5) build a sales force through the founders located onshore like London (given its a product that needs a sales force).
Dirk emphasized that London is mainly a PR center where its rather expensive to live (something I can assure!), thus living in somewhere else like Copenhagen or Berlin might be equally good or even better option. He also pointed out that you can do development across the time zones, but if you can avoid it do so because you will be much more efficient.
I will disagree with Dirk especially on the MBA bit -if you do an MBA you will most likely rationalize yourself out of all the big ideas and dreams you had, and even if you can stick to your dreams the socialization effect among the MBA students will lure you to the nice (yet bored out of your mind) life at McKinsey. Naturally, there are exceptions for example if you have already started a couple of startups and you like to know a bit more about say finance. In the latter case, an MBA might be a good option to meet other like minded people in a place like Stanford and maybe even learn a bit. But as a rule of thump, avoid MBA schools!
What comes to the location, I believe one should build strong ties to the Silicon Valley (something Jyri Engeström, the Jaiku co-fouder, also reiterated) as it can significantly cut the time to market which might make a big difference from the time the window opens to the point where a competitor has already a critical mass and beyond your reach. That said, I still believe one should stick to the community s/he knows be it Copenhagen, London or Helsinki, since culture and support mechanisms like your family and friends make a big difference and if that is not a big enough reason you might loose not only time but also your money while trying to relocate and adjust.
Slush Helsinki
There has been much talk around Slush lately. Yet, it has not yet been very clear at all what is happening and I'm partly to blame. Now I try to shed some light onto the issue and at the same time invite you all to Slush.
In a nutshell Slush is a new Helsinki originated event for startups by startups. The whole process started when I along with a few others passionate about the subject were trying to brainstorm on how to give a boost to the Finnish startup scene, home and abroad. We had an idea that a bigger annual event might be the answer for the lack of visibility among Finnish startups in the global arena. If nothing else, we saw that such an event was missing from the Finnish startup fabric.
After throwing ideas back and forth for while I, Peter Vesterbacka (of Mobile Monday fame) and Kai Lemmetty (of Floobs) came up with an event that would show the best Finland has to offer, once a year every year. Later on Helene Auramo from Zipipop jumped along to bring her positive energy to the team and give it an even stronger startup perspective. Peter came up with the name Slush and so it started.
Finnish summer can be an amazing experience with its nightless nights, but there's also the dark winter we
live with the other six months. Thus, any startup born in Finland have equal number of slushy and dark Novembers in their DNA as they have those warm sunny Julys. Many say the one quality a startup needs above all is perseverance against adversity and out of all the languages Finnish is the one that has its own word for describing just that. The word is Sisu and I believe that it has much to do with Finns pushing through those dark slushy winter months. Thus, an apt name especially for a startup event. Having said that, I believe this is the case with startup DNA all over the Nordic and Baltic countries.
After finding the right people to take on the challenge we were ready to start working. What we really aim to do is light up the startup scene, namely by showing students what entrepreneurship can be at its best, and show the international crowd that there is much more to Finnish startups than the tip of the iceberg they've seen so far. Naturally big part of the whole event is to enable the Finnish entrepreneurs meet not only each other but also investors and other businesses from home and abroad.
We know there's a plethora of events that are not working as well as they could for the entrepreneurs themselves, and thus we decided that everything we do should be done in the interest of the startup scene in mind. If something is in conflict with that focus, it will be scrapped from the agenda. For startups by startups or nothing.
Now we are at a point where the website is up and running so we can tell people about the event, invite them along and spread the word. Even the fact that the website leaked out half ready turned out to be only beneficial, since many people wanted to help out. For example the nice guys at Valve volunteered to help out right away. I've also heard that the Bolder guys are ready to do their part and Scred has promised to make the actual platform for selling tickets for the event.
The event itself will take place 24th November at Korjaamo Culture Factory in Helsinki and run through the whole day. The program will be a combination of four parts:
- Success Stories - This is were we have the Finland's finest web entrepreneurs lined up. Risto Siilasmaa from F-Secure, Petteri Koponen from First Hop/Jaiku, Ilkka Paananen from Sumea/Digital Chocolate, Asmo Halinen from Apaja only to name a few of the entrepreneurs that have started small and made it big.
- Technology track - This is modeled on the Startup Developer Gathering (SDG), which was put together by Kai Lemmetty. For Slush Kai is putting together a tech presentation bar none. This track will go on all day and have many Finnish heavy weights like Teemu Kurppa (Jaiku/Google) presenting their insight for the Slush attendees.
- Thirdly, a showcase where up to 40 local startups can show what they have, be it products, services, their team, philosophy behind the concept and what not.
- Fourthly, probably the most important reason pulling the event together in the first place, we have seven pre-screened teams presenting their business ideas to the audience. These teams will be funded by the Slush Fund. The Slush Fund will be in effect just as big as the combined sponsorship revenue plus the proceeds from the sold tickets will allow it to be. In another words we will channel all the money from the event (minus cost e.g. rent for the venue etc.) to the seven teams. If you are a student with an idea for the next big thing you should apply. Instead of writing code and making coffee at one of the big corporations next summer, you could spend the summer of 2009 working on your own idea and have the expertise of most of the Finnish startup community to draw from.
In a nutshell this is Slush Helsinki. An event for startups by startups.
If the website seems that it does not give out all the details yet, it is by no means because we want to keep you in the dark but rather because we are working on the agenda as we go along to make it as good as resources and time allow. ArcticStartup will be naturally reporting what is happening at the event itself but also how the event is developing from now until the day itself in late November. Welcome to the Slush everybody!
Edit: There was a mistake saying October instead of November. The correct date for Slush is NOVEMBER 24th.
A Chat With The Jaiku Founders At Seedcamp
I met the Jaiku founders (now at Google), Petteri Koponen and Jyri Engeström, yesterday at the Seedcamp evening party and asked them how they see the startup scene in Europe versus US and of course what they are up to nowadays.
