Addendum II: The poll was reopened due to overwhelming comments that it was fair. I disagree, but I just work here.
Dear Friends: This poll is no longer valid due to pro Jaiku-er Andrew Malach jacking the results. Until Andrew Malach (self admitted) jacked the results, the results were almost identical to the Alexa web traffic stats for the three sites. We will attempt to roll back through time and declare the results as they were before this incident.
Begin original post.
Given all of the hype, it seemed like a good idea to get an honest appraisal from the actual people using the microblogging networks. So here it is: The Jaiku versus Pownce versus Twitter poll. Vote, spread the word, heck, take the code and put it on your own blog!
Fair Disclosure: My client FortiusOne provides the Pollmappr service used in this poll, and does so for free. We will be providing an intelligent map via GeoCommons to show the results on a national basis.
On a different note: Beltway bloggers, there’s a meet-up this Thursday. New Media Nouveaux Keynote speaker Toby Bloomberg will host a blogger-meet-up vis a vis Success in the City the night before the conference. Toby’s the author of the nationally recognized Diva Marketing Blog (currently ranked 1,678th blog in the world by Technorati).
Also Aaron Brazell of Technosailor fame (ranked 2,788th) will be there, too. The blogger meet-up will be at the Brio Tuscan Grille at Tysons Corner Center in McLean, VA on July 12 at 6:00 p.m… Spread the word and we’ll see you there!
Pownce is by far the coolest and best featured.. However, twitter’s already massive community and adoption make it hard to unseat. (I’d love to use pownce more, but all my friends are on twitter)
Jaiku was only really compelling back when twitter’s performance sucked so terribly. It’s definitely a distant third now.
I’ve loved Pownce since the first day I was on it (ok…a whole week ago yesterday!), but I really still have an attachment to Twitter. Thank God we don’t have to choose…I’m sticking with both for now.
Though I will admit I let the Jaiku thing slide a few months ago…shame on me.
There are two problems here (sorry to be a downer)
The first is you have to see that these are not all apples.
The second is there are not winners and losers in web apps. It’s not binary like that.
They all serve different needs and each has potential user bases in the hundreds of millions. One of them may not become a household name, but it won’t be because a different one was better.
I think it would be much more valuable to take the time to really understand the features of each are most important and to why.
Ted, please explain to me how a social network that features microblogging for the masses does not lose when it has a significantly smaller population of users. That’s from a participation standpoint, from a revenue standpoint and from a branding standpoint.
I am sure Nextel fans would say their cell phone network’s different and has a unique user base with millions of subs, but I am also pretty sure Sprint-Nextel doesn’t like being third with AT&T and Verizon kicking their butt.
I think what people miss about Jaiku is that it is basically an insta-API. Where in Twitter or Pownce can you integrate RSS feeds into your stream? Photos? Netflix movies? Music?
Pownce isn’t a micro-blogging tool, though.
It’s for sharing files, etc. I would compare it more to 37 Signal’s Highrise or I Want Sandy than to Twitter or Jaiku.
Completely pointless poll. What you’ll end up with is the service with the most-users-who-see-this-poll. It won’t tell you which is the best service. Get people to select which they’ve used and then rate each that they’ve used on some criteria other than ‘gut feel’.
Rick:
Your posting makes me think you were bitter about Jaiku’s performance before you had your network hijack the poll. Of course, now the results are less than objective because you are gaming the system. That’s too bad.
Perhaps a better service would get better results,
Geoff
Hi Geoff.
Rick isn’t part of Jaiku – he’s a fan, and third party developer. He was actually just giving feedback on how meaningful these results are likely to be.
I, however, am part of Jaiku. I’m also the person who linked to this page from Jaiku.
If you’d like that posting removed from Jaiku, let me know.
You appear believe that Jaiku’s service could be improved (which anyone who uses it knows it could). What particular aspects of the service could be improved to convert you from a non-fan to a fan?
I must admit, that I find your negativity towards Jaiku rather interesting, in light of your choice to place us last on your little survey.
Andrew
Whoah .. “Jaiku developer Rick Measham” .. check your facts! I’m a fan and third-party developer as Andrew says. And also a fan and third party developer of Twitter (you’ll find me very vocal on their API group in the early days)
Now, if we’re airing our laundry in public, here’s my reply to Geoff:
Bitter? Gaming the system? No, it’s sensible polling theory. Your poll has absolutely no statistical validity other than the number of users each service can get to click on a button.
I’ve no idea how Jaiku was doing before I voted and it’s hardly ‘hijacking’ a poll if someone blogs about it!
Get down off your high horse and take my criticism on board. I don’t care who wins your little poll.
END
Reading Andrew’s post above, I think it would be even more stupid to require the blog post to be taken down. The poll already has no real purpose. His link is just going to get you more ‘votes’ and possibly a few new readers!
I see now that you’ve removed the poll.
I guess you didn’t really mean it when you said “Vote, spread the word, heck, take the code and put it on your own blog!”?
Geoff, you need to be careful about libel and defamation laws. Andrew did not ‘admit to jacking the poll’. He just linked to it: “I’m also the person who linked to this page from Jaiku.” That’s all.
If you’re going to delete our posts, at least acknowledge publicly what we said. If you’re going to post the email you sent to me, have the decency to allow my reply to show.
Thankyou for reinstating them.
For the record: I agree that it’s cool if you voted, Andrew, but the results were so obviously moving one way — to the point that Jaiku superseded Twitter — that the results were no longer valid. You jacked the poll. You CHEATED.
Until that happened the results were 52% Twitter, 27% Pownce, and something like 9 or 10% for Jaiku. These numbers almost identically match Alexa stats, so I believe they were valid. Further, admitting that Andrew works for Jaiku just killed it. Until this point it was only fans, not corporate.
As far as where I stand, I like Pownce, so why would I be so pro Pownce and run a poll that has Twitter kicking it’s butt?
Are you a 12 year old? It’s an online poll for crap sake! If you want to go back to what Alexa says, why run the poll in the first place? Just use Alexa.
All it would take for the other services to increase their numbers would be for THEM to make a post pointing out the poll.
It’s an ONLINE POLL, it has so much less legitimacy than Alexa and from what I can make out, you want the results to be the same!
IT IS NOT CHEATING to tell people to vote for you. Every election in the democratic world has campaigning, and that’s for something a hell of a lot more legitimate than some trumped-up self-important twat’s blog.
I disagree.
To cast back to your (personally offensive) name-calling on Pownce, I promoted a vote. In political terms, that’s called electioneering.
‘Cheating’ would be rigging up a system that voted multiple times from different locations, or something along those lines.
If you’d asked for staff of the services to not promote the poll, I would have not done so. You didn’t. You encouraged promotion of the poll, and now you’re editing the original post to remove that encouragement, making my words look like lies. It also appears that you’re removing comments from here that don’t suit you.
If there’s dishonesty or cheating anywhere in this, I know where I see it.
Cheating is cheating, boys! You cheated.
Who cheated? By posting a link to an online poll? Hmmm…
Unfortunately, I can’t say that we’re a real pollster. I hope this inspires someone like Nielson does a real poll or real survey because until this happened I thought we had an accurate sampling.
As far as I see it, there are like 200 votes on the poll right now… does anyone here believe that a poll based on 200 votes can give any valid result? Doesn’t matter if it’s Twitter or Jaiku the winner. With 200 votes, there’s no statistic meaning in it at all. Any simple movement (like Jaiku’s posting, which I would be far from considering “cheating”)can make the results change quickly. But also something as simple as how many people use Twitter in this company, or how many friends with Twitter does the author of this page have. Is that a representation of the whole internet?
Oh please. This is a poll about the most social of the social networking apps the web has to offer. It was inevitable the link to this poll would be posted on the networks themselves, otherwise, what’s the point? You’d only be measuring what the readers of this blog are using.
As far as I can tell, the bias on the web has been towards Twitter, if anything, and Pownce because it’s the bright shiny new one. However, that says little about actual quality. I think Jaiku’s had a harder time partly because the US media hasn’t been as quick to pick up on a service not based in the US, and mobile functions, which is where Jaiku really shines, are not as popular there. Also, Twitter spread there first, while Jaiku was in Europe, which is not the hub of digital buzz.
Given all of the above, no poll as vague as this one can be considered a serious analysis of which service has the best features. It’s a fun popularity contest on par with a relationship quiz in Cosmopolitan, or a Wii Vote, and should be treated as lightly.
That’s about enough of the mudslinging.
It’s not illegal to campaign for a vote – but it is poor reputation management to allow an employee to play the part of a fan. That’s a serious breach of transparency for any Web 2.0 company.
Now – back to the spirit of the rules. Geoff did this poll to determine which network he ought to keep. It’s only fair to ask his regular network of readers to guide him on what THEY use. Soliciting votes well outside the realm of regular Buzz Bin readers defeats the purpose of the poll.
You didn’t do anything illegal – but you pissed in Geoff’s well, and that’s why you’re getting the reaction you are.
One other point: Alexa is a poor choice for an objective measurement, because it’s really easy to game. Just install the Alexa toolbar on every PC in your shop, and make your website the home page. You’ll start showing traffic stats like crazy.
Now – everyone chill, and stop with the libel and defamation stuff. It’s beneath every one of you.
All, I’m yielding to the group conscience. The poll is open until the 28th. Thank you so much for your feedback.
@occamsrazr.com:
1) Where does an employee play the part of a fan? It was posted on the official Jaiku presence stream on Jaiku.com. Only employees get to post there.
2) If he only wanted his regular readers to vote, he wouldn’t be telling them to “Vote, spread the word, heck, take the code and put it on your own blog!”
2b) However I agree that keeping to his regular readers would have made for a hell of a lot more useful data
3) Alexa is LOT harder to game than an open poll
Rick’s right, I did say that. And you can still take the code (blog this button) and post it until the 28th.
For the record, I never envisioned it getting to the point where Jaiku, Twitter or Pownce employees would “post on the official Jaiku presence stream.” From a PR perspective, that’s pretty bad, and I agree with Ike that it’s a serious breach of transparency on Jaiku’s part. Though, I am not sure Jaiku sanctioned this activity.
But this is social media and socially the Jaiku community cares about their network’s image. Otherwise Jaiku readers would have blown the message off. That’s pretty cool!!!! What this demonstrates — right or wrong — is that people care about these three services.
Rick, I do owe you an apology for slamming you originally. Please forgive me. It really is a silly poll, and means very little in the grand scheme of things. I hope this controversy causes someone to take a real poll at some point.
Hm, I think it’s best that I not touch the whole “jaiku rig” controversy. I’ve had a twitter and a pownce. I tried both for a good amount of time, especially since I have friends on both, but none on jaiku. However, I ditched them both for jaiku in the end, regardless.
Twitter’s good points:
- it was first, thus more popular
- streamlined
Pownce’s good points:
- ability to share actual files
- attractive templates
- comments on posts
Jaiku’s good points:
- ability to stream other feeds
- their “badges”
- comments on posts
I’ve found that twitter and jaiku are actually on the same level when it comes to server hiccups. I was turned off by pownce’s apparent lack of a separate method of displaying my posts. Jaiku’s feature of streaming my other feeds eventually won the war in my eyes.
I like Jaiku because you can put links to your other pages
But I like Twitter because you can customize more the design
I don’t know Pownce :P
Wich I like better is a good question