broadcast user that they automatically friended to all existing user accounts. The broadcast user currently has “154830 fans”. Of course, some people may have already unfriended this account and, like with any free service, many users may have abandoned their accounts. Still, it is at least a pretty good estimate of total user accounts.
As of January 10, Twitter Facts estimated 750,000 public users, 850,000 total users, and 300,000 active users. I couldn’t find similar estimates for Jaiku. At least none with any data to back them up. I did keep finding links to a post on Ars Technica suggesting that many Jaiku users are moving to Twitter due to Google’s neglect of the service after buying it.
I’m puzzled by why Google keeps buying companies like Dodgeball and Jaiku, only to quickly neglect upkeep and enhancements on the services and watch users leave in droves. Maybe they just wanted the engineers for other projects and found buying the company to be the easiest way to get an entire engineering team? Even if that were true, they apparently aren’t doing well enough on retention, as I’ve read about many of the lead engineers at the acquired companies leaving soon after the acquisition. I’m sure they don’t enjoy seeing something they worked on long hours every day for many months dumped on the side of the road.