Updated December 13, 2008 11:14am | In the ever-competing world of micro-blogging site, there is one I hold dear to my heart, Rejaw.
This service, launched in August 2008, has had some great features from the start. Will them help it survive against Twitter?
Company
Rejaw is a creation of Infoteria, the Japanese company behind the nifty live-chat tool, lingr.com.
The people behind Rejaw are a very interesting blend of experienced and talented people: Kenn Ejima, Danny Burke, Chris Boone and Satoshi Nakagawa.
Mini-blog + chat = fun
Most micro-blogging services are limited to 140 characters entry, for they tie their offering to SMS. As I 
don’t believe in an SMS future, I think the 1000 characters allowance that Rejaw gives you for a “shout” is liberating, even if most users tend to limit themselves to smaller entries, either by a Twitter-induced habit or by simple convenience.
What sets this tool apart are the little details. It’s really a micro-blog plus a chat tool: while the entries appear on the timeline, replies are threaded. It might be nothing, but when you know the massive amount of chatter that Twitter can generate, this is more than welcome.
To limit the noise even more, the replies auto-close after 3 days, keeping the discussion fresh. This might also have been done for another reasons: Rejaw is the only service I know of that pushes entries with a new reply on top of your page (well, except for Friendfeed, which is not a direct competitor).
And if you’re not willing to listen to the noise for a while, you can simply mute a conversation. Clever. Some other services should learn.
Obviously, there’s also a direct message type of entry, called “whisper”.
As in the defunct Pownce service, links, audio and picture are automatically embedded on Rejaw, which allows for a very nice enhanced experience.
Add to that a very nice user interface and you’ve got a winner.
Push it
The other nifty difference is the pushing of the timeline. While other services and desktop softwares are pulling entries, Rejaw is real-time, either on the web or on the recently-updated MacOS X client (note that there’s an iPhone app as well).
This force could also be an Achille’s heel in the long run, as servers must be doing some more work to achieve this. Scalability will be the keyword to follow.
Reach
A technological winner, a user interface winner, but has it reached a big enough audience to become a mainstream service?
I’ve used comparable services, namely Plurk.com and Identi.ca and avoided the gorilla, Twitter for my comparative audience-reaching graphs below.
Compete.com shows that after a usual initial curiosity bump, Rejaw has been stagnating in its unique visitors, while Plurk.com sees a wider appeal.
Google Trends shows the same story, albeit a bit more dramatically.
Finally, Alexa.com’s reach calculation shows the same loss of steam since September.
What now?
Why the loss of users? Curiosity-fatigue, first, and as in every other new social service: the network effect. You’ll only use a service if you find friends or acquaintances or a niche community you’re willing to be part of.
I’m on the fence about Rejaw having been able to create such a niche. I have found some nice people to chat with, especially Kenn, the founder (Rejaw offers you to follow the 4-people team at the beginning to get you started).
The Mac-only route might also have turned off some users that were willing to try the service but not keep their experience browser-only.
It must be however noter that Rejaw did all the right things in the beginning, especially with having its API for developers ready from the start. But is it enough for the long run?
Economic model
There doesn’t seem to be a publicly worded economic model for Rejaw. Neither there is chatter about ads or premium content. It’s not even known if the founder would welcome any of these solutions if asked.
However, ads are not, in my opinion, the future for Rejaw.
While Plurk.com was able to catch a bigger audience, Rejaw remains more familiar to Twitter users and people looking for a simple yet efficient UI. That’s the asset to build upon.
The team should hence be concentrating its effort to create groups, the lack thereof being the biggest complaint people have about Twitter.
Workgroups, small businesses and office-less companies are keen to use a great service for interaction. The push abilities of Rejaw would put the company on the forefront of users looking for real-time teamwork.
Users would certainly continue using Twitter for their main micro-blogging purposes, but Rejaw could become their #1 resource for behind-closed-door business activities. That’s a consequent niche.
Yammer is somewhat playing in that field, but I believe Rejaw has the tools and the talent to offer much more.
Updated December 13, 2008 11:14am | Kenn tells me he agrees on the group functionality and talks about a Windows-client
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