An Eclectic Mind

So what?

After reading, mostly on Twitter, a lot of hype about Pownce, I finally got an invitation from a fellow Twitterer, newmediajim. I signed right up to check it out.

And was extremely unimpressed.

Sure, Pownce is pretty — much prettier than Twitter. And Pownce is apparently attracting the more mature crowd that I wish used Twitter more frequently. And Pownce offers a lot of additional features, like file exchange, event sharing, and the ability to send messages to just your friends — or a specific friend.

But, as one of the recent TWiT participants mentioned on the most recent TWiT podcast, why do we need that? We have e-mail to send files and online calendar programs to send event notifications.

Finding new Pownce friends is virtually impossible without a “public timeline” like Twitter has — you can only see the messages posted by your Pownce friends and the people you are a “fan” of. Of course, there is the occasional “public” message, which goes out to everyone. But in the one week I’ve been a member, I’ve only received one of those, so it’s obviously not a feature people want to use.

And I really like Twitterific, which works with Twitter. The Pownce non-browser solution requires you to install Adobe Air and then an application that runs within it. I don’t know about you, but I think Adobe is even worse than Microsoft at installing a lot of useless under-the-hood crap on your hard disk when you install its software. I prefer to keep new Adobe apps off my computer unless I need them to get my work done. (Can someone explain what Adobe Bridge is all about and why I should keep it when I have a perfectly good Mac OS Open dialog?)

And then there’s the advertisements vs. fees we can expect in the future. A note on the Pownce sidebar urges you to “Go Pro!” This will support larger files — certainly larger than you can send in e-mail — and will hide advertisements. Right now, there are no advertisements. There aren’t any on Twitter, either — unless you count the never-ending stream of self-promotional tweets by some Twitter members (which are easily blocked out). Pro will cost you $20/year. Is it worth it? We’ll see. But I know that if Pownce starts filling up with advertisements, I’ll use it even less than I currently do — which is once every few days, just to check in.

Because you must have an account to participate at all on Pownce, the folks at Pownce give new members 6 invitations so you can invite your friends. Trouble is, I have enough trouble convincing my friends to get online with Twitter, which I prefer. If I’m going to bring new friends online to this new kind of social networking phenomena, I’m going to ask them to join Twitter, not Pownce. I have no desire to monitor both services.

Now I know that Pownce was created by the folks who gave us Digg. And there are rumors flying around that any anti-Pownce Diggs are being buried by the folks at Digg. (It would be interesting if everyone who read this post dugg it just to see if it survived this test; you can find a “Digg This!” link at the bottom of the post.) And the TWiT-TV team seemed to have a lot of respect for the programming team. But even they aren’t pushing Pownce. And that says a lot because they push almost everything they talk about.

In any case, I have 6 Pownce invitations — unless the folks at Pownce take them away from me for being so unenthusiastic. I’ll hand them out to the first six people who comment on this post and specifically say that they want an invitation. Please do not put your e-mail address in the body of the comment. Just put it in the e-mail field of the comment form; I’ll find it.

And if you’re reading this and already have a Pownce account, please use the Comments link or form to tell us what you think about it. Am I missing something? Or do you have the same general thoughts about Pownce?

And, for the record, I was equally unenthusiastic about Jaiku. Sorry.

Call Me a Geek, On Blogging, Social Networking comments, e-mail, Mac OS, media, Microsoft, networking, online, podcast, software, time, Twitter, war

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