Pownce - trying hard to see the new & cool side

Jul 1st, 2007 | By Steven Hodson | Category: The Social Web

It’s not like those of us in the tech b’sphere don’t have enough ways to communi…. errr … converse with each other whether it be from Facebook to Twitter but now we have a new addition to the field in the form of Pownce. This is the newest social IM from Megatechtronium who counts Kevin Rose the digg.com boy wonder among the founding team.

Pownce is still in Alpha and only available to mere mortals with an invite from an existing user of the service. I was lucky enough to have one sent to me by SusanReynolds a Twitter ‘friend’ and because I am a sucker for trying out new stuff I headed out right away to get hooked up so I could see what all the fuss was about.

Well … I’m still waiting. Sure Pownce offers some potentially cool things that Twitter doesn’t like file sharing and event sharing. That said however; and acknowledging that Pownce is still at Alpha stage of development, I am not impressed with it. True it might become more useful as I gain more friends (gawd I am so tired of that overworked useless word) but right now Pownce is nothing more than a big YAWN.

Unlike Twitter Pownce launched with an available desktop client however you will need to download and install Adobe’s new AIR platform before being able to use the Pownce client. The client is sporting the new dark gray with white text UI style that seems to be gaining traction which IMO is boring as hell. Also unlike Twitter when you go in through your browser to your Pownce page you have to manual refresh the page to see any new posts - big mistake.

The one big thing that Pownce is also missing is an open API for developers. Now Stan Schroeder at FranticIndustries doesn’t feel that an API really made any difference to the wide adoption of Twitter

It [Twitter] doesn’t, as far as I can tell, have a public API yet, and this is where Twitter shines; but I’m not sure that Twitter reached such a degree of popularity that the presence of an API could make a big difference.

On this I disagree with Stan because I think one of the things that did make Twitter as popular as it is is because of its API and that fact that there are so many type of clients available for Twitter is what helped drive it forward - just ask Dave Winer who is bringing TwitterGrams to the game.

In my opinion Pownce needs to get an API in the hands of developers as soon as possible. Let them get their hands dirty with wrapping different UI’s around the service. When people have a choice in how they are able to access a service that service has a much better chance of success. Folks don’t like having their hands tied to only one or two ways to access stuff they want.

All in all I haven’t found anything with Pownce that would lead me to believe that it is either a Twitter killer or the next hot fad of Web 2.0 but time will tell and I’ll stick around for awhile if only to get my hands on a useable API.

My Pownce page

[tags]Pownce, Twitter, FranticIndustries[/tags]