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A Pownce Review and Free Pownce Invitations
By Michael Lundberg | September 9, 2007
Let’s review Pownce! For those of you unaware, Pownce is a micro-blogging website created by Kevin Rose, Leah Culver, Daniel Burka, and Shawn Allen. Together the four of them have formed a company with the unusual name of Megatechtronium. If the name Kevin Rose sounds familiar, it’s because he’s one of the inventors of now infamous Digg.com (and according to his Digg About page, TechTV, but I’ve only heard of Digg). Leah Culver also enjoyed a short bit of fame as the girl who paid for her new Apple MacBook Pro by selling ads and laser etching them on the cover of her pristine laptop. See a clip of the etch here. Kinda smart, if you ask me, but I’d hate to laser etch a perfectly beautiful Apple MacBook Pro.
Enough with the background and setup, alright? So what in the world is Pownce and what does it do? The main Pownce page describes the site as:
Pownce is a way to send messages, files, links, and events to your friends. You’ll create a network of the people you know and then you can share stuff with all of them, just a few of them, or even just one other person really fast.
It’s very similar to Twitter, another micro-blogging site. In fact, it’s not uncommon to hear people refer to Pownce as “Twitter on steroids.” The idea is very simple: you create a blog-style page and add friends and fans to your page. You follow other Powncers (as Pownce bloggers are called) by sending them invitations. When that person accepts your invitation, they become a “friend,” which enables you to send private messages to that user. Invitations that go unanswered are added as “fans.” You still receive postings from fans, but you cannot send that person private messages, and they aren’t following your posts. So fans are allowed one way communication and friends are allowed two-way communication. This makes sense and is pretty straightforward.
Pownce messages can be sent to your all your friends, a single friend, or the public (which makes it viewable to anyone who hits your Pownce site). Messages can be one of several different message types. They are:
- A plain-Jane blog-style text message
- An html link
- A file - most commonly, an MP3 file, but it could be anything
- An event - what, where, time and date
One of the things that really sets Pownce apart from many of the other startup social networking sites is the user interface, which was meticulously designed by Daniel Burka. The interface is very clean and straightforward, and is instantly usable.
Since the Pownce was first released in June 2007, there have been many new features implemented. Some of those features have been released just in last several weeks. Some of the improvements change the way messages are displayed in Pownce. For example, video links from YouTube, Google, Metacafe, Revver, and Vimeo now appear as embedded videos in your message. Photos from Zooomr are also automatically embedded. The rest of the changes seem to focus on making Pownce more social networking friendly. Powncers are now able to provide links to other social networkings sites in their Pownce profile. Currently, 36 different social networking sites are supported, including Last.fm, StumbleUpon, and Del.icio.us, to name a few. They’ve also recently added support for XFN and Microformats. Finally, you can add links to your instant messaging accounts. Even better yet, you can now control who sees all of the above. After all, you might only want to reveal your IM accounts to your Pownce friends and not your fans or the public.
I don’t like to continue comparing Pownce to Twitter, however, Twitter is the most well established micro-blogging site and for better or worse is the yardstick that other sites are measured by. Pownce offers quite a bit more functionality over Twitter. For one, Pownce does not cap your text posts to 140 characters, as in Twitter. This is a very welcomed feature. Also, whereas Twitter only allows you to post simple text messages, Pownce allows many other message posting types. Pownce offers a stand alone based on Adobe’s AIR platform.
On the whole, Pownce is superior to Twitter. Still, there’s several features that I’d like to see that would make the site even better, at least to me:
- Pownce Updates via SMS - Twitter has this functionality, and while I didn’t think that I’d use it much, I actually do.
- Blog badges - According to this interview, the creators of Pownce allegedly consider blog badges “cliche”. I can’t find any direct quote attributed to any of them, but I’ll assume that it’s true. After all, it’s not an uncommon opinion. Others have railed on blog badges, but I don’t see the harm in trying to enrich your site with blog badges, especially personal blogs.
- A public API - Let me be the first to say it: I’m no coder, however this is probably the most requested Pownce feature. Luckily it’s alreadyin the works and scheduled to be released sometime in late 2007. I imagine that as soon as the API is released, this will solve the first two complaints. It will also likely eliminate the need for Pownce to maintain their own standalone AIR-based client, as I assume that the community will likely create their own Pownce clients and tools.
- A mobile site - When I use Twitter, I’m typically on my mobile phone. Sometimes I update Twitter using SMS and sometimes I update it via their mobile site, http://m.twitter.com. Since the web browser on my Blackberry Curve is best utilized on a mobile or mostly text site, a mobile version of the Pownce page would make updates on the go much easier.
Well, that pretty much summarizes my thoughts on Pownce. I hope that you liked my review. If I haven’t been clear, I’d recommend it to anyone who’s currently using Twitter. Pownce has a lot more to offer than Twitter. The only drawback at this point (besides the four things I’ve listed above) is that Pownce’s user base is much smaller than Twitter. As long as Pownce continues updating and adding features at the rate it’s done over the past four months, I think it will continue to gain on Twitter. I can’t do much about my other four complaints, but I can help to increase the user base. So, if you’d like to try Pownce, I have 7 invitations to give away. All I ask is that you leave a comment below. If you’re already using Pownce, add me to your friends list. My Pownce profile can be found here.
Topics: Web 2.0 |
September 16th, 2007 at 7:01 pm
hi michael…
great review of pownce - i read about the microblog in mac|life magazine…
i was wondering if you still had an “invitation” available that you would be willing to pass along to me…
thanks michael…
have a great evening…
david guion
September 19th, 2007 at 8:22 am
@ David - sorry for the slow reply. For some reason, your post was labeled as spam. Luckily, I happened to check my Wordpress spam filter this morning, which is something I don’t normally do. Don’t worry - your Pownce invitation should be waiting in your email box now!
In any case, I hope you’re enjoying the site. You might want to check out this post (http://www.michaellundberg.com/2007/09/16/free-invitation-to-im-in-like-with-you/) for another hard-to-find Web 2.0 invitation to “i’m in like with you.”
Thanks,
Michael Lundberg
http://www.michaellundberg.com
November 26th, 2007 at 11:39 pm
[…] the way, if you’re interested in checking out Pownce, I have a full review here and free invitations. Just leave me a comment […]
November 29th, 2007 at 11:42 pm
[…] - if you want to know more about Pownce or need an invitation, read this previous post. If you’re already on Pownce, you can friend me […]