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October 9, 2007

Google buys social mobile startup Jaiku

Mike Butcher

63 comments »

jaiku.jpgBREAKING NEWS: Jaiku, the Twitter (and Pownce)-like service from Finland, has been bought by Google.

Jaiku Founders Jyri Engeström and Petteri Koponen today posted this on their homepage:

“While it’s too soon to comment on specific plans, we look forward to working with our new friends at Google over the coming months to expand in ways we hope you’ll find interesting and useful. Our engineers are excited to be working together and enthusiastic developers lead to great innovation. We look forward to accomplishing great things together. In order to focus on innovation instead of scaling, we have decided to close new user sign-ups for now. But fear not, all our Jaiku services will stay running the way you are used to and you will be able to invite your friends to Jaiku.”

The terms of the acquisition have not been released.

This is a fascinating move by Google which would have looked at Twitter prior to this acquisition, and Twitter’s recent $5 million series A funding last July.

There will be inevitable comparison’s with Google’s acquisition of Dodgeball, which largely came to nothing, but it would appear that the time for social networking and blogging via mobile has come. Google’s ability to add scale and marketing muscle to Jaiku should be putting Twitter on the back-foot right now.

More coverage on TechCrunch UK.

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This entry was posted on Tuesday, October 9th, 2007 at 9:37 am and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Comments

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  1. Jokes

    October 9th, 2007 at 9:44 am

    I think this will help twitter. They can be innovative and Jaiku will likely become the next dodgeball. There is no better feeling than being quick and nimble up against the 100lb Gorilla.

  2. Fred Oliveira

    October 9th, 2007 at 9:45 am

    Pretty impressive. I actually like the move.

  3. Chris

    October 9th, 2007 at 9:47 am

    “There will be inevitable comparison’s with Google’s acquisition of Dodgeball, which largely came to nothing”

    I remember that. Perhaps this is to complement the new Google mobile OS that they are releasing free of charge to mobile manufacturer’s next year.

    Had this been a good article I feel it would have mentioned that.

  4. Don Wilson

    October 9th, 2007 at 9:49 am

    The growing list of acquisitions with no cash amount given is increasingly annoying. That’s the most interesting part of these stories.

  5. Brad

    October 9th, 2007 at 9:50 am

    This could certainly have interesting tie-in possibilities for the coming of the gPhone and could also tie in nicely with “big in Brazil” orkut. I’m not entirely sure twitter is looking for an exit at this point. Its not like Evan needs the pay day.

  6. Ed

    October 9th, 2007 at 9:51 am

    NOooooooo. I love Jaiku :(

  7. Chris

    October 9th, 2007 at 9:51 am

    engadget.com/2007/08/28/google-is-working-on-a-mobile-os-and-its-due-out-shortly/

    You know, I wonder if this is related. HMMMMMM…… ha, Hmmmm….

    People are slow, they just are.

  8. Rajiv Dingra

    October 9th, 2007 at 9:58 am

    Any idea whats the valuation? and what was the deal details?

  9. Sid

    October 9th, 2007 at 10:06 am

    So what?

  10. Ed

    October 9th, 2007 at 10:13 am

    #9 - So what? How’s about Google getting a very efficient mobile platform? Notice my mention of mobile in that sentence. Couple that with all the rumors of the G-spot…I mean GPhone, and you have a very strategic move by Google which very clearly hints at a mobile publishing platform which could form an integral part of the GPhone! Ain’t nothin but a G thang, baby!

  11. Antony

    October 9th, 2007 at 10:16 am

    Twitter is interested in a $60-75mm payday. It’s not a shock that Google (and presumably Yahoo thus far) has turned down a Twitter aquisition. Since the GC was rumored to be approx $50mm, I suspect Jaiku would be just north of the $30mm range. Buying into Jaiku also has hooks into Nokia (since they were an investor and much of Jaiku staff originally comes from Nokia). And, it’s a Java app…which means it would run on a billion+ phones!

  12. Leo Koivulehto

    October 9th, 2007 at 10:21 am

    Good for Jaiku. This way they’ll probably get a considerable boost to resources and can take Jaiku to the next level. Good going!

  13. sriram

    October 9th, 2007 at 10:29 am

    Looking forward to Jaiku in Singapore

  14. Uhhh..

    October 9th, 2007 at 10:52 am

    Go Finland!

  15. Deals and Coupons

    October 9th, 2007 at 11:18 am

    Good for Jaiku!

  16. Amit R.

    October 9th, 2007 at 11:19 am

    Not sure if this acquisition makes sense. Social networking does not work.

    Amit
    http://www.chai-yah.com

  17. mosites

    October 9th, 2007 at 11:21 am

    Aside from “mobile microblogging”, I see this as the purchase FriendFeed was hoping to be the subject of…

  18. Lin

    October 9th, 2007 at 11:24 am

    I think this will be good for Google and Jaiku. I can’t wait to see Jaiku added to my Google applications.

  19. ZiZi

    October 9th, 2007 at 11:31 am

    i never understood why i would want my friends to know what i am doing on every minute of the day… especially when i am picking up prostitutes.
    what happened to the days when people demanded privacy?
    what is going to happened in 20 or so years? with sites like fakebook and myspace, will privacy be a thing of the past? what happened to the days when we had celebrities and people who worshiped them? now everyone is or can be a celebrity on youtube.
    we humans are truly fascinating, i wish i can live another 20 thousand years to see what will become of us, we will probably be all connected to one pipe that feeds us life, information and death. we will think as one. individuality will be an act of terrorism, in fact, you wont be able to sustain life as an individual.
    Viva la Revelation!

  20. SharpDee

    October 9th, 2007 at 11:37 am

    This is truly amazing. We are in our infancy, but can see this as a great move..

  21. Chris

    October 9th, 2007 at 11:37 am

    @Amit,

    “Not sure if this acquisition makes sense. Social networking does not work.”

    engadget.com/2007/08/28/google-is-working-on-a-mobile-os-and-its-due-out-shortly/

    This isn’t about social networking. This is about buying up random mobile services so that the Google Linux OS doesn’t look empty. They want mobile phone producers to use it since it’s a free license and managed like WinCE. It means lower development costs for phone producers and total control over mobile for Google.

    They are just buying up random crap to make it look feature rich. That’s all this is.

    Here, have some Larry O’s.
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/d.....323244630/

    I hear they are good for critical thinking.

  22. Chris

    October 9th, 2007 at 11:39 am

    Wrong link, the Larry O’s are here.
    http://www.flickr.com/photos/d.....322350683/

    We would do the same thing as google, except we can only afford development costs. Not buy up random crap costs. :( Must be nice to be Larry.

  23. Lex

    October 9th, 2007 at 11:55 am

    @ Antony / #11

    upwards of $30MM? I doubt it. Sounds like primarily a talent acquisition to me. Outside our little tech world, this service is TINY. Hell, even within our tech world this company is tiny — I only vaguely recall anyone mentioning it before.

    My guess is

  24. Chris

    October 9th, 2007 at 12:02 pm

    “upwards of $30MM?”

    I disagree. This was at least a 50M+ buy out.
    http://www.alexa.com/data/deta.....=jaiku.com

    Top 10k on Alexa, mentioned all over the blogosphere. Most of the traffic is from the USA, which is desirable. Google could have cloned/supersetted this easily then jumped their ranking by promoting it. That being the case, this was an amicable purchase, so I doubt they nickle and dimed them. I would guess 50-100M in cash and equity.

  25. goop

    October 9th, 2007 at 12:22 pm

    Talk about doublespeak, this is definitely a talent acquisition.
    They are working on “delivering a new, better service” while closing signups for the existing one. Jaiku is most definitely abandoned/dead.

  26. Ben

    October 9th, 2007 at 12:33 pm

    Despite the doublespeak and indications to the contrary, I really hope they don’t ditch Jaiku in its current implementation. It is clean, simple, and has killer phone and IM integration.

    It’s also a very simple and competent RSS aggregator. Anyone remember “Pipes”?

  27. Chris

    October 9th, 2007 at 12:39 pm

    pipes.yahoo.com/pipes/

    Yahoo Pipes sucks. So does the MS popfly interface.

  28. techmine

    October 9th, 2007 at 12:43 pm

    I have used Jaiku and it is not that great a service. Nothing good about it.

  29. David Haddad

    October 9th, 2007 at 1:59 pm

    Google will get a lot of with the Jaiku acquisition:
    1. the team: some of them have worked at Nokia before, Jyri was a senior product manager there. Also they have top developers like one of the main guys from the jabber open source project.
    2. the software: jaiku has a pretty nicely designed & well integrated Symbian app. The app gives your status according to the current phone profile. If you’re talking then you appear as busy for example. The app can also pick the cell tower id that the cellphone is connected to and approximate your location.
    3. goodwill: the people using jaiku love jaiku.

    * The company will probably move to California or another big Google hq. Although it is Finland-based the team was distributed with some team members working from other European countries. So the acquisition will probably not start a dev. center in Helsinki.

    * I expect jaiku’s leadership team to integrate well within Google’s ranks since they have been good acquaintances with the top Google brass.

    Congratulations!

  30. clones mashups

    October 9th, 2007 at 2:52 pm

    How will Jaiku/Twit/YouTube mashup companies get affected by this?

    Like the one reviewed yesterday. Thanks.

  31. ipanema

    October 9th, 2007 at 3:20 pm

    now that blogger and jaiku will be related, i hope that my jaiku profile will appear on my blog. it used to until it stopped and i took it out. :)

  32. MikeW

    October 9th, 2007 at 3:27 pm

    Big deal - Google picked up a couple of developers. It’s like the Parakey / Facebook deal.

  33. Bruno

    October 9th, 2007 at 4:24 pm

    You can view a video interview of Jaiku’s CEO here:

    http://us.intruders.tv/Essenti.....m_a93.html

  34. james

    October 9th, 2007 at 9:45 pm

    It would be nice instead of just texts, they allowed pictures and videos to be directly uploaded to the web….maybe through a gphone?

  35. Social Networking

    October 9th, 2007 at 11:14 pm

    that’s a great move by Google as always.

  36. Mike Butcher

    October 10th, 2007 at 1:50 am

    FYI - There is a longer analysis at http://uk.techcrunch.com/2007/.....by-google/

  37. Alexis Brion

    October 10th, 2007 at 2:38 am

    From my point of view Google has made another good move as Jaiku seems to have a much more clear interface and, maybe, better chances to win European hearts. I would really like to test it! I wrote an article about Jaiku design: http://www.designvsart.com/blog/?p=58

  38. SharpDEE

    October 10th, 2007 at 3:28 am

    The world is making way for socnet, predominantly ways are being worked out and experimented for mobile socnet. This move seems to cover the gPhone with a kool “G”aiku service now.

    The fundamental need of people connecting and needing to connect to people will always remain, whichever be the medium, else the world does not make sense.

    Try us as well at http://www.chittr.com , we power conversations, the Indian way.

    till then -

  39. Dan Schawbel

    October 10th, 2007 at 6:07 am

    They should have bought twitter.

  40. Robert

    October 10th, 2007 at 7:36 am

    #24 Chris, just forget about alexa. Sites like popurls do even have a higher ranking than jaiku.

  41. visible.mobi

    October 11th, 2007 at 3:49 am

    Google is being very aggresive in mobile space.

  42. Cosmonica

    October 30th, 2007 at 7:07 am

    This will definitively increase the competition race between Twitter and Jaiku. The former has the advantage of having more users in its platform. Increasing hte user base is the best way to compete against Google-Jaiku now.

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