“I thought I saw a putty tat. I did, I did see a putty tat!”
These famous words were never the last from Tweety Bird, but for a growing number of Twitter users they will be. The last thing they will see before giving up on Twitter will be the Twitter server cat, the default screen when the service is completely down.
It’s not just down time on Twitter lately that has made the service sit somewhere between frustrating and useless. Even when Twitter is up, updates/ refreshes fail, pages don’t load and third party tools can’t connect. There has been a lot of downtime.
Twitter is a service you want to love. Like Blogger, Evan William’s earlier start up, it has not only become a market leader, it has been vital in creating a new online service market focused on IM.
We covered competing services in September 06, but one service is gaining acceptance fast as the masses on Twitter start looking elsewhere. The service is Jaiku.
It doesn’t have the people presence that Twitter has (yet) but at least you can communicate with people on Jaiku reliably. High profile converts such as Leo Laporte have led the way for a growing number of Twitter users looking to make a change.
A new platform needs new tools. Here are a few to get started with in an attempt to recreate a (positive) Twitter experience on Jaiku.
Windows
Jaikaroo: desktop application similar to Twitteroo, slick customizable interface
Jay-q: another desktop app, ugly interface but works well.
Mac
Juhu: Twitterific style service for Jaiku. Why do all the pretty apps end up on the Mac?
Jaiku Dashboard Widget: post to Jaiku from the Mac OS X desktop, without using a browser.
Cross Platform
NitWit: versions available for Linux/ Mac/ Windows and supports Jaiku and Twitter
Steve Clifford has a more extensive guide which includes mobile apps and support for WordPress. The only thing I was unable to find is a Twitbin style Firefox add-on for in-browser use but it’s sure to be developed by someone shortly. If you have any favorite Jaiku apps you’d care to share, let us know in the comments.
At least Jaiku doesn’t have downtime? That’s cuz it doens’t have any users! There’s no way to predict how it would handle Twitter’s userbase and load.
Personally I have no interest in Twitter, but their growth rate is phenomenal and interesting. As a programmer, I as well think RoR is their main problem. As if the site is even that complicated… what’s the point of using something like RoR for such a simple site that does ONE THING?
Why can’t we get an app for Twitter that looks as good as Jaikaroo does? All the Twitter Windows-based desktop apps look terrible.
I still maintain that Jaiku 1. has a terrible name, it’s just not catchy, and 2. would have the exact same issues as Twitter if they actually had any users.
Actually, this article made me give Jaiku a second chance and today I switched (while still keeping an eye on Twitter). The main gripe I had with Jaiku is that I couldn’t update it from my Blackbery (I have no SMS on my phone), but now there’s JaikuBerry and it works great.
While I do know some people on Twitter, I have never met any of them in person, so I don’t feel too attached to Twitter (even though I’m sure I’ll keep following them on Twitter)
I have noticed that the Jaiku rss feed comes accross way better in my Tumblr blog (http://w8in.tumblr.com) than the Twitter feed (either built-in in Tumblr or rss).
I also like the built-in location and icon options in Jaiku better. I’ve noticed I place more importance on my Tweet or Jaiku ending up on my Tumble-blog rather than on Twitter.com or Jaiku.com.
Maybe I’m an oddball Twitterer or Jaiku-er and I do not represent the average user.
I am sure Twitter will rebound soon. They must be adding servers like crazy.
My $0.02 on scaling:
Scaling to handle the traffic Twitter does is not easy in any language. At these levels, what counts is your skill of generally scaling a Web app (base design, caching, DB, session sharing, optimizing web server/OS/etc configurations etc) rather than the particular language you chose to work with.
PHP has the advantage of significantly better scaling out of the box - ie, you’ll get further trafficwise before requiring special scaling expertise - but, again, at the traffic levels Twitter deals with, you’ll need scaling expertise no matter which environment you chose.
(FWIW, I’m no Rails fanboy - did a lot more PHP than RoR so far - and frankly still don’t see the point of Twitter at all ;))
I have done comparisons on both and I prefer Jauku for several reasons. I really like their commenting feature and found it much more engaging. I will continue to use both services.
To be fair to Twitter, the scaling issues can be a nightmare and I am sure they are trying very hard to resolve this.
@Tim: “Using RoR will increase your overall costs (and thus profits) because it takes 5x the amount of servers to scale in comparison to PHP/Python.”
‘5x’ the servers to scale with RoR than PHP eh? Could you point out where you got that number from (benchmarks links?).
Oh wait–let me guess– you pulled that number out of your ass.