I just read Google's response to Ars Technica's accusations of letting Jaiku to linger into insignificance.

Lets review the story a bit

1. Jaiku is founded by Jyri and Petteri. They offer a service which happens to be identical to Twitter, only their basis is mobile messaging for Nokia N-Series phones, and they kind of trump Twitter in almost every aspect. However they never gained much traction. If it weren't for Chief Twit, O'Reillyand some other new media moguls even I wouldn't care.
2. Google falls in love with Jaiku. They decide to acquire the company. Aside from the physical assets which are of course way beyond petty and insignificant to the mothership, they acquire the insight of Jyri and Petteri.
3. Jaiku is let alone to dry up and shrivel. To date:
   • their embedded badges still can't display international characters,
   • outages are common,
   • the iconset that decorates messages is crappy,
   • the look and feel of the site makes me think that the designers need to visit colourlovers.com way more often
   • the only channels with life in them are those of support/feedback, and two podcasts: twit and buzzoutloud. The latter isn't an official one and no one from the podcast seems to observe it.
4. Ars Technica complains about the situation, stating among other things that this reminds of the Google/Urchin acquisition. And boy are they right ? I started out mocking Twitter, but not only is Jaiku technically challenged, they also failed in creating a community where my interaction options aren't limited to like 5 people.

"First,we know the Jaiku site is currently notasresponsiveas it should be. The issue is that users (some of them spammers) are starting to add new feeds to their accounts at a more rapid pace, sowe’re workingon cleaning up the database to get the site back to its normal level of responsiveness. We should have everything sorted out soon; in the meantime,thanks for your patience.

Second, I know you’re all excited to hear what’s next for Jaiku and what we’ve been working on since joining Google. To be honest,a lot of our timein the early goingwas spent on getting to know Google. And, of course, a little R&R during the holidays. But we’ve also been working hard on the next steps for Jaiku, and are already making progress on what I think are some cool new ways to help you stay connected with the people you care about.We can’t share anyof the specifics right now, but stay tuned."