I have heard a couple of nice things about Jott and would like to try the service. Sadly I can’t because I am in the UK, and Jott only works across US cell phone networks. Compare and contrast with Twitter, which supports Europe, using the UK as a bridge. My Twitter network now has a nicely global flavour. Yesterday Suw Charman needed a translation of a Dutch phrase… and Werner Ramaekers provided it. She wasn’t subscribed to him, but he was to me, so I provided a pivot point. Needless to say after Suw discovered that “aanvangsleerfase overslaan” meant “skipping the initial learning phase” she subscribed directly to Werner.
Bursty people tend to aanvangsleerfase overslaan, but interestingly enough they’re probably less likely to need to RTFM because they immerse themselves in the services they use.
Perhaps I am being unfair to Jott, given it relies on voice transcription, whereas Twitter is “just” text. But explosive service growth is always going to be more likely if you skip the initial learning phase and go global out of the gates. America is not exactly a backwater yet, but its only a portion of the addressable market. My furthest Twitterer is aqualung. He is why RedMonk has an Aussie client. To get a sense for out of the box globalisation check out the hypnotic “view of God” Twittervision. Apparently the BBC twitters in viatnamese. Who knew?
Anne 2.1 » Blog Archive » links for 2007-04-20 says:
April 20, 2007 at 11:31 pm
[…] James Governor’s Monkchips » Twitter vs Jott: One World vs One Country. Aanvangsleerfase overslaa… Going to have to credit James as a co-author of a book if he keeps providing all the best terminology. “aanvangsleerfase overslaan” = skipping the initial learning phase in Dutch. (tags: learning terminology glossary lingo) […]
Chris says:
May 25, 2007 at 5:13 am
You should worry about the voice transcribers, I’ve been a jotter for quite some time and I haven’t had ANY problems. No telemarketer calls out of the blue, stupid spam or anything. Give it a try once it reaches the UK! I think since Jott just landed a 4.5 million deal that wont be long!
David Jackmanson says:
June 14, 2007 at 2:02 pm
Yep – I am in Australia and am constantly frustrated by internet services that I can’t use.
I’ve just looked into Jott and PhoneTag as ways to post voice that get transcribed to Twitter – but they won’t even let me register because I am not in the USA 🙁
Apparently _only_ the USA exists to most startups.
But Twitter will send messages to my Australian mobile and I can send tweets via the UK Twitter number. I don’t do much updating from my phone, but when I want to, it only costs 25 Australian cents to SMS to the UK on my prepaid plan.