Jaiku

Jaiku was a social networking, micro-blogging and lifestreaming service comparable to Twitter. Jaiku was founded in February 2006 by Jyri Engeström and Petteri Koponen from Finland and launched in July of that year. It was purchased by Google on October 9, 2007.

When Jaiku Ltd was an independent company, its head office was in Helsinki.

History
Jaiku was created in February 2006 by Helsinki-based Jaiku Ltd. The founders of Jaiku chose the name because the posts on Jaiku resemble Japanese haiku. Also, the indigenous Sami people of Finland have traditionally shared stories by singing joiks.

On January 14, 2009, it was announced that Google would be open-sourcing the product but would "no longer actively develop the Jaiku codebase" leaving development to a "passionate volunteer team of Googlers".

On March 12, 2009, Jaiku was re-launched on Google's App Engine platform and on March 13, 2009 the source code to JaikuEngine (the open source equivalent of the jaiku.com codebase) was released.

On October 14, 2011, Google announced they decided to shut down the Jaiku services by January 15, 2012.

On November 29, 2011, a group of former users launched Jaikuarchive.com – The Jaiku Presence archiver "to save an important part of our digital heritage".

Software
Jaiku consisted of a website, a mobile website and a client application which acts as a replacement address book that runs on S60 phones.

Jaiku was compatible with Nokia S60 platform mobile devices through its Jaiku Mobile client software. The software allowed users to make posts through the software onto their Jaiku page. Jaiku released their API, which allowed programmers to make their own third party software components such as Feedalizr. One of the main differences between Jaiku and its competitor Twitter was Lifestream, an internet feed that shares users online activities utilizing other programs such as flickr for photos, last.fm for music, and location by mobile phone. Since Jaiku became open-source, the Lifestream function was removed.

Features
Jaiku.com allows users to post their thoughts, opinions, and comments in regards to their lives or any other subject. The posts that users create are called "Jaikus" and users have the option of making them publicly or privately visible. The site allows users to keep in touch and interact with friends either through the website, or through the mobile application. A feature that will be soon be available is one that allows users to post to the same Jaiku stream.