Leo Laporte, podcasting celebrity and chief of the TWiT podcast network, has announced on his blog that he is leaving Twitter and moving to rival service Jaiku.
We’ve talked about Twitter previously on GizBuzz, but it’s basically a ‘nano-blogging’ service where you answer the question “what are you doing?”. It’s very addictive and there are many tech personalites, and normal people alike, using the service.
Laporte cites one main reason for leaving Twitter, the fact that the name is too similar to his podcast network TWiT. Laporte was an early adopter of Twitter, and mentioning it in his podcast was one of the reasons it was able to gain so much popularity.
But I’m leaving it [Twitter].
The problem is the name. I wish to heck he’d named it Tweeter, or Tooter, or anything but Twitter. Twitter is so close to TWiT that I’m afraid it’s really confusing. And it hasn’t helped the confusion that I’ve been such a fan of Twitter. I’m sure half the people there think we have some sort of relationship. But we don’t. And the proliferation of programs like Twitbox and sites like Twit This are not helping things much. So let me repeat…
Twitter has nothing to do with TWiT.
And, I’m afraid, I can’t have anything to do with Twitter, either. It’s just fueling the confusion. Fortunately, there are several similar services including Groovr, Dodgeball, and Jaiku. After a cursory glance at all three Jaiku seems to have the best mix of features for me (I’m too old to be groovy, or hooking up) so I’m moving to Jaiku. My handle is ChiefTWiT. Hope to see some of you there.
Fellow GizBuzz and YouMakeMedia blogger Chris Van Patten speculates that there could be a potential legal battle between Leo and the TWiTs and Odeo (the parent company of Twitter). It’s certainly a possibility, but I do hope that Leo and friends are seeking a non-legal resolution to the problem.
Twitter is certainly making a buzz in the tech community and this move does raise its profile yet further, just unfortunately does so in a bad context.
While I’m on the subject of Twitter, I just want to let everyone know that I’m busy hacking away at a solution so that you can get the latest Oratos posts (from here, FOSSwire and YouMakeMedia) delivered directly to your Twitter account.
It’s not done yet, and it’s currently a bit unstable and temperamental (and we’ve been having some issues with it posting old stories over and over again), but if you want to brave the beta, you can follow us at http://twitter.com/oratos.
