Jaiku
A Finnish microblogging service launched before Twitter, joined Google, became open source and then lost the hosted community it was built to connect.
Quick facts
- Existence state
- Officially Gone
- Peak stage
- general availability
- Research confidence
- high
- Last verified
What it was
A formally launched microblogging and activity-stream service founded by Jyri Engeström and Petteri Koponen.
Jaiku combined short posts with location and activity feeds, presenting a mobile-aware stream of what friends were doing.
Existence timeline
The Finnish microblogging service becomes publicly available.
Google buys the company and continues the hosted network.
Google open-sources the code and transfers maintenance to volunteers.
Google includes Jaiku in a product-consolidation sweep.
The formally available social network stops operating.
Why it ended
Google stopped active product development after acquiring Jaiku, later open-sourced the code and closed the hosted service on 15 January 2012.
Last confirmed trace
Open-source JaikuEngine code, exported posts, screenshots and archived pages preserve portions of the network.
What it left behind
Its early activity-stream ideas anticipated features that became normal across mobile social platforms.
How we classified it
The archive unit reached normal public release or operation and is no longer obtainable in its original public form.
Verified normal public availability maps to 100 under Arrival Score V1.
Sources & verification
Last reviewed 2026-08-01. Sources are linked so readers can inspect the evidence directly.