Jaiku founders Jyri Engeström (left) and Petteri Koponen are reporting that they have closed a deal with Google.

The Mountain View, CA based Google has acquired arguably one of the most switched on mobile communities. While Twitter may well be the one in the US, Jaiku’s European base has proven attractive enough for the search engine giant to swoop. Terms have not been disclosed

Update: Google comments on the deal on the Google Blog. Interesting to note that while existing users to Jaiku are still welcome on the service, there’s a moratorium on new users signing up. Anyone showing interest will be placed on the list for invitation when the service reopens. Given the huge number of new users social networks can gather each day, this is probably to allow for a smooth hand-over and integration into the Googleplex, and to make sure the flood of interest the announced deal will generate won’t topple the service.

Google have said that the Jaiku team will be relocated to Mountain View for three months before eventually returning back to London. A Google spokesperson speaking to blognation said this acquisition was part of their strategy to counter the closed proprietary nature of Facebook and we should expect to see a few more acquisitions in this space soon.

Google will announce a new set of APIs on November 5 that will allow developers to leverage Google’s social graph data.

So how long before we see the fabled Gphone which is being developed here in London and where does this leave Pownce and does this change the balance with Twitter?

(More thoughts on the Twitter question over on Blognation USA, and Tris has some advice for Pownce and Twitter on Blognation Canada)

Yesterday must have been Web TV “launch” day because Joost, TIOTI, and TestCard.TV all went public (beta).

Joost is of course the more famous of the three with over 1.3m people having already tried it out since it launched. Compared to a mere 18,000 people who have tried TIOTI. TestCard.TV is officially launching today at the MashupDEMO event in London, so it has no traffic numbers to speak off.

These figures are not surprising given the latest figures on TV-viewing habits by the Royal Television Society, which shows that the under-30s watch 40 per cent of their television by downloading it over the internet or viewing it ‘on demand’ rather than watching it as broadcast using a variety of P2P Bit Torrent applications.

All three are therefore trying to tap into this changing market by offering “on-demand” social TV which enables you to watch, share and discover programs. What clearly differs is the content sourcing and the related commercial models.

Joost has taken a licensed content model supported by mainstream commercial advertising much like Jaman . I wonder if Zennstrom and Friis would have still done this licensed model if they had not got into so much legal hot water with Kazaa?

The other two smaller startups are sourcing unlicensed content from around the web and aggregating it. Their commercial models are based on contextual banner advertising and affiliate marketing that drives viewers to e-commerce sites like Amazon to purchase the original/related DVD content.

Personally I think there is a half way house between purely licensed content and unlicensed content aggregation and discovery which can be commercialised with adverts and affiliation much like Last.FM did with music. Interestingly http://www.last.tv resolves to Last.fm, something I am sure we will see and hear more about in the near future.

Technically speaking all three offerings are very basic given there is no support for OpenID, Social Portability (XFN), Microformats (hcard, rel=me) or APML to record my viewing attention. This means I will have to use a proprietary login model, recreate my social network again from scratch and all my data (viewing habits, reviews etc) will silo’d and non-reusable or transferable!

Given that Facebook doesn’t support any of these things either and is totally proprietary, it may not matter to the vast majority of other people.

So is there anything to watch? I decided to see what on demand programs I could find using Joost, TestCard.TV and TIOTI.

Joost
It’s been a while since I last used Joost and the most obvious change in the latest beta is to the UI. Sadly the quality of the content hasn’t changed much even though it now has 15,000+ TV shows and 250+ Channels of licensed content.

But I was hopeful that I could still find something to watch but sadly it was pretty dull repeat stuff, the same sort of thing you find on remote Sky Channels which no one ever watches but the cat.

So however clever the technology or however smart the recommendation engine is, personally I won’t be rushing to use Joost right now unless the content gets better.

Tioti
So could TIOTI do any better? The new beta has a much fresher look and is clearly more overt about being social TV which you can share and co-discover with your friends.

The content is sourced and aggregated from around the web and although not licensed it is more compelling and in-line with the sort of programs I would want to watch, although the playback quality is a little poor.

I could imagine spending more time on TIOTI than Joost, especially with the very interesting Friends x Episode Tracker but as I said before they need to make it easier for me to invite my friends, I don’t want to start another social network from scratch.

Testcard.TV
This is the newest site and although the UI is a little confusing on first site, once you see the original testcard you begin to understand the colour scheme. I have to say I preferred this site for the very rich and compelling content. The other thing I noticed was how quick the content played through and the quality was good enough for me to watch full screen on a 21″ LCD monitor.

So the problem I forsee for Joost is that the best content is already licensed to the likes of mainstream broadcasters - BBC (Heros), Sky (Football) etc. and the unlicensed aggregators have the type of content I would like. Will Joost like the struggling BT Vision and NTL manage to get and keep an audience to attract commercial advertisers?

Related:
Other IPTV players in this very crowded market include:

Babelgum

Lifestation

Jaman