Twitter = Down…Time to Try Pownce?
Twitter, my current microblogging application of choice, alternates between being available and unavailable of late. Ev and the rest of the Twitter team are working hard to resolve user issues. In the meantime, have you thought about giving Pownce a try?
Pownce - What is it?
Pownce is a social networking and micro-blogging site started by Kevin Rose, Leah Culver, Daniel Burka, and Shawn Allen. Pownce allows you to access your existing social networks, including:
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Twitter
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Facebook
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LinkedIn
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AIM
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MSN
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GTalk
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Your blog
all from a single user interface!
Share links, files, pictures, events, and micro-blog posts with the public, your friends, or in private messages. Pownce became publicly available January 22, 2008, and people are still learning about its existence.
I’m still developing my Pownce network - unsurprisingly, the social network with the most crossover is Twitter. Some have said it’s like Twitter on Steroids but I’m hoping it’s more like Twitter on coffee, my personal obsession. Since my Pownce network is so limited, I’m encouraging you to take this opportunity to try Pownce with me.
Get Pownce. Add me as a friend. Let’s figure out Pownce together. 
Tags: Coffee, Daniel Burka, Kevin Rose, Leah Culver, Pownce, Shawn Allen, Twitter
February 1st, 2008 at 5:05 am
Pownce is an interesting application because it doesn’t have or really in any way (in my observation) try to compete with the ubiquitous input that twitter has but still tries to capture that need for messaging small bits of information with friends.
I don’t see it’s usefulness as a text/event messaging platform just because it doesn’t exist in the “always on” environments that something like twitter does or even other apps with a mobile presence (pownce doesn’t have one) but instead as a platform for sharing files and little bits of information that *need* (important) to be private for some reason (meaning only viewable among friends) and viewable at any time interval even up to several weeks between visits.
I currently use Pownce solely as a file transfer mechanism to transfer files, mostly music, that I’d like my friends to have or see in a protected environment but don’t really matter.
The problem is that you can’t see messages that you post privately to your friends from before you defined that relationship in their application which is too bad for the use I have for the site.
February 1st, 2008 at 5:07 am
[...] 31, 2008 I originally wrote this as a comment in reference to another post by An Bui but wanted to record these thoughts here as [...]
February 1st, 2008 at 5:08 am
I’ve been wanting to state my thoughts on Pownce so I just re-blogged that comment on my own site.
February 1st, 2008 at 5:47 pm
Hey Zach - Thanks for your thoughts. I def. agree that pownce mobile would go a long way towards attracting more adopters. Here’s to x’ed fingers that will be a future feature.
February 1st, 2008 at 5:56 pm
Have you tried Jaiku? I’ve been told it’s a better alternative to twitter.
June 6th, 2008 at 2:09 am
Another good one is Flock, called the “social web browser.” It is (obviously) a web browser, but it also has all your favorite social networks added in (digg, twitter, facebook, flickr, etc…). You should check it out. Flock.com .