Chris Brogan calls it The Great Jaiku Migration of April 10.. Twitter might call it something less polite. Twitter, the great “You need to know I’m doing my dishes” site, is floundering because of it’s popularity. It seems be unable to keep up with demand, and as a result, has for the most part become useless during the day. I don’t know too much about the technology behind it, but it isn’t scaling well.

Possibly prompted by Leo Laporte’s move a few days ago, it seems that today, frustrated by a non-responsive Twitter, a big bunch of Twitter users (many of whom I’m friends with) said in their best Eric Cartman voice :“That’s it – screw you guys, I’m going home.”

Jaiku is a Twitter like site, with some nice add-ons like the ability to add RSS feeds and more social networking features. The online community hasn’t crushed it yet, though you have to wonder what this kind of load this will do to them..

I don’t think the move is permanent yet, and the nice thing about all these free Web 2.0-ish sites is we can move around at will. A mass migration like this is something special though, and at first, I’m sure the Twitter people will be relieved that their servers can breathe again. Then will come the realization that those users might not come back.. Why would they? The community’s moved too..

What happens next? Well, Twitter’s losing the advantage it had of being the first widely-adopted micro-blogging-stalking-thingie.. If Jaiku holds up, Twitter’s going to end up where Odeo is. If it doesn’t, somehow I’m sure there’ll be another place.

In the meantime, pull up a chair, grab a beer, and listen to the quacks & tweets of the Tweeter migration of April 10..

Oh yeah, I’m bobgoyetche.jaiku.com (for now)

Posted by Bob on Tuesday, April 10th, 2007 at 8:58 pm.