Don’t Fancy Twitter? Try Jaiku

I’m not a big user of social networking sites for a very simple reason: I simply don’t have the time. The little time I spend at home can definitely be better utilized than hanging out on Facebook, Myspace, Orkut, etc. Having said that, I know plenty of people who just can’t do without their social networking.

Twitter is one of the new ways of letting people know about your life. Twitter allows you to post mini-blogs, in the form of ‘tweets’ to your profile page on the website. Tweets are then delivered to your friends via website, IM, or SMS.

This kind of social networking has spawned a whole new generation of sites, one of which is Jaiku. Jaiku allows you to create an activity stream or log of your daily activities and share them with your friends. Every time you want to update your log, you send a short message called a jaiku, named for its resemblance to a Japanese haiku.

Jaiku is free to use and you can choose whether you want your stream to be publicly accessible or only be seen by your friends. Posting a jaiku can be done directly though the website or sending a text message from your cell phone. You will need to activate your phone first.

One major difference between Jaiku and Twitter is that Jaiku has a feature called Lifestream, which allows you to use other programs to share your online activities. This means you can share photos using Flickr, music using Last.fm, etc. Another point of interest is that the service was purchased by Google 6 months ago so it’s worthwhile seeing what this turns into.

I’m not going to be using Jaiku anytime soon but that’s just me. What about you? Is Jaiku interesting enough to try? Or do you think these services are just a waste of time. Let me know in the comments.

Update: The Jaiku website is no longer available on the Internet. It seems as if the service is dead.

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