Why Jaiku instead of Twitter? One word: Vision.

• Google bought up/into the vision of the founders of Jaiku.
• Google buys up companies in order to buy in talent and insight.

Jyri, one of Jaiku's founders has been on a year long evangelical road trip informing everyone that would listen of the underlying sociological insight of what they are doing.  And Jaiku has been working consistently at implementing a clear vision to serve that insight. Twitter, on the other hand have always worked to give the impression that they just experimented and got lucky. Google (looking to the future) is buying the team with the vision.