Comments for Microblogging Service Rejaw Shuts Down: A Victim of Twitter's Success?

Microblogging Service Rejaw Shuts Down: A Victim of Twitter's Success?

2009-05-01T17:58:40Z

Last summer, while Twitter was struggling to keep its servers running consistently, a number of rivaling microblogging services like Plurk and Rejaw arrived on the scene, ready to capitalize on the imminent exodus of Twitter's disgruntled users. Twitter, however, was able to turn its fortunes around and is now just about as stable as any other online service. It is also growing at an impressive rate and has become the de facto standard for microblogging in most users' minds. For Twitter's competitors, however, this has meant that there are fewer users to go around, and today, Rejaw announced that it will shut down its servers on May 31st.

]]> Rejaw has stopped accepting new sign-ups and will allow its users to export their data as an XML file.

In the absence of real interoperability between the different microblogging and messaging services, Twitter, which already has the most users, will only gain momentum. With Identi.ca and Laconi.ca, we do have real, open-source, standard-based alternatives to Twitter, but the sheer momentum behind Twitter will make it increasingly hard for newcomers to break through to a large enough audience.

In many ways, this is quite a shame, as most of the innovation around Twitter has come from third-party developers, while services like Rejaw, for example, tried out a lot of interesting features and user interfaces. Rejaw, for example, made 'real' real-time messaging a core feature of its platform.

Comment from Avatar X on 2009-05-01

2009-05-01T20:56:02Z

What a great Rejaw screenshot you did Frederic... :D

The thing is that Rejaw failed because it never did promotion of any kind or had any promotional materials, didn't launched with a IM bot and a Windows app and finally it just didn't had any direction that indicated it planned to get monetized. the track record from the developers didn't helped either. they did the generally panned Lingr.com

Even with all that i truly loved the real time factor it had. something i wish that Pownce had. that was another failing from rejaw since it never had reply tracking like pownce or a way to look out for other users in the service either. Rejaw should not be compared to twitter. that is a mistake, it was a pownce successor since it has a true microblogging format since it allowed 1000 characters and used the same form that pownce did.

So Rejaw is not a victim of Twitter success. it is a victim of bad direction and bad decisions and a example that having a great concept and execution is not good enough if you don't take care of the marketing and having the most essential tools to do so or so that your users do so.

Comment from Avatar X on 2009-05-01

2009-05-01T21:00:44Z

another mistake is saying that identi.ca and laconi.ca come from Twitter since they come from jaiku as jaiku as closed for new users when it got acquired by google. the same goes for Plurk. those 3 are jaiku direct derivations, not twitter derivations. much different to the more generalfact that they all compete in the social messaging space like twitter and that twitter is obviously #1 service in the space. :)

Comment from Falafulu Fisi on 2009-05-01

2009-05-01T21:17:29Z

The question is not if but when Twitter is going to shut down in the future.

Comment from websites for kids virtual worlds on 2009-05-04

2009-05-05T04:18:29Z

Never tried Rejaw before, never even heard of it. The logo's font style kind of reminds me of Twitter.

Comment from söve on 2009-05-25

2009-05-25T14:47:27Z

The thing is söve that Rejaw failed because it never did promotion of any kind or had söve any promotional materials, didn't launched with a söve IM bot and a Windows söve app and finally it just didn't had any direction that indicated it söve planned to get monetized. the track record from söve the developers didn't helped either. söve they did the generally panned Lingr.com

Comment from Bbaiter on 2009-06-05

2009-06-05T07:27:37Z

I think the next big thing is geo-micro-blogs, i.e. micro blogging services just like twitter and jaiku but your blogs there will be geo tagged with your location. So I am wondering why haven't Rejaw guys give it a try and tried to enhance their service or even reshape it completely before they decide to shut it down.

One more point here, which is marketing, people everywhere online and offline are talking about twitter, and I don't think it is just because they like the service, but I believe that twitter marketing team are just doing what they are paid for. While Jaiku and Rejaw on the other hand are not focusing on marketing their service at all.

PS. For those who say that Jaiku is still up and running, and that it hasn't been turned off yet. Ok, Jaiku is like a zombie now, it appears to be up and running but it is deserted now, people are just leaving it and migrating to twitter, and most of the blogs published there are just published because their authors are using services like Hello.txt and Ping.fm, and they just write their tweets there and let them be published everywhere regardless of whether they use this service or that one.