Update @ 11/12/07 ~ 1200h: Looks like Leo gives 10 reason why he’s back.  Nothing so far about his concerns about TWiT / Twitter confusion.

When Leo Laporte leapt from Twitter to Jaiku earlier this year, the blogosphere was in a bit of an uproar. I was. Sort of. And the reason was because Leo didn’t want people confusing the service, Twitter, with his podcast, TWiT.

At the time I wondered why Leo just didn’t sicc some high-powered lawyers on the gents at Twitter; generally that seems to be the established thing to do when it comes to protecting your trademark / copyright (although I am no lawyer), as my understanding is that if you don’t defend it you can lose it.

By abandoning Twitter for Jaiku for this reason — well, it just seemed ineffective and childish.

Nevertheless, it seems like Leo has come *back* to Twitter today at http://twitter.com/leolaporte, raising the white flag with “I surrender, Twitter. You win“.

(Incidentally, he’s also dropped SixApart’s Vox for Wordpress for his blogging platform of choice, although that happened almost two months ago).

At any rate, there’s no apparent reason why he’s come back to Twitter, and there’s no further updates as to his thoughts about people confusing the two terms. Did it have anything to do with his thoughts about Jaiku? That because its in closed beta he only had 76 people following his Jaiku feed? (compared to the 1200+ followers within hours of announcing that he’s back on Twitter?) Or perhaps he’s merely come to his senses about the non-issue of people confusing Twitter with his podcast.

Or, maybe its a little of all of the above.

Given the amount of consternation earlier this year, I wonder if anyone else has taken notice — and furthermore, if Leo’s going to let us in on why he’s come back.

So it looks like Google bought the ‘other’ ambient broadcasting / lifestreaming / presence management / microblogging tool, Jaiku today. Mind, like Mat Ingram, I haven’t actually tried Jaiku, but from all accounts it has a great many similarities to Twitter, although up until now, a fraction of the buzz (and possibly userbase as well, if some imperfect measures are made).

The funny thing is that while I haven’t tried Jaiku, I *have* tried Twitter, and while I *get* that some people love it, I’d have to say that it must still be way, way, way up the early adoption curve. I mean, I’d like to think that I’m somewhat early-adopterish myself, but even I don’t really *get* it in the way that I use it regularly — or any other tool, really, from Facebook’s “status”, to Pownce.

Now, that may have to do with the fact that I don’t have “friends” who I know might be interested in what I am doing at any given time, or merely, perhaps that I have crossed the “old” dog divide some time ago and never even realized it (not being able to learn new tricks and all of that).

But in a regular moment of hubris I’m going to go out on a limb and say — that in the absence of any real data (Charlene Li, where are you?) — that if this kind of service is something that is *so* early adopter, that I wonder if the rest of the world … who Google is really aiming at, in spite of its Geekish roots … is really ready for this.

Do I have any particular reasons for this? Only that to start using this kind of service requires you to have a fundamentally different relationship with your social network than most people have right now.

They have to be prepared — and actually want to, of course — report on what they’re doing, regularly, during the course of the day, before work, during work, and after work. Presuming that they might work. Substitute “work” for “school” if you want.

And furthermore, they have to know that their messages are going to be reciprocated in some way. So, its not a behaviour that’s occurring in isolation; rather, there has to be at least one, but probably more “friends” that are equally as active.

Now, its one thing for Scoble to jump in with both feet (or, Leo Laporte, for that matter) — and its another to have that brother of yours who doesn’t know how to use “blog” in a sentence without giggling, or that niece of yours who is happy to text with her friends, but might not be interested in a new activity until her friends are.

Now, Google has all the money in the world to invest in these relatively small bets (because you can bet that Jaiku’s a smaller bet than, say, Twitter), and maybe that’s all this is. Dodgeball was way ahead of its time, and Google has a track record of what it does (and doesn’t do) with some of its acquisitions.

But if Google fast tracks Jaiku, will the world be ready for it?

You know what? I’m not so sure.