BusinessWeek Logo
Jaiku

Jaiku

www.jaiku.com

September unique visitors: 76,017
Change from August: -22.5%
Funding: Acquired by Google for an undisclosed amount in 2007

Why it's unique: Many people use Twitter to post mini-surveys—throw a question out there, and wait for "followers" to weigh in. The problem is, responses often get lost in the slipstream of other tweets. This is the strength of Jaiku, a site that looks a lot like Twitter but every day sprouts hundreds of group discussions on questions like "When's your birthday?" (77 comments), and "Can men and women really be friends without having sex?" (92 comments).

How it plans to create revenue: A year after Google acquired Jaiku, the site has changed little and continues to be run by founder Jyri Engeström. Jaiku will become one of the first applications hosted on the Google App Engine, a marketplace of downloadable software tools, but Google has yet to integrate the social network, its users, and its features into Google's other social sites, such as Orkut or Google Talk.