Pownce Is Simply Twitter Plus More
Web July 4th, 2007
The latest web application in the spotlight called Pownce was launched by a crew of four comprised of Kevin Rose, Leah Culver, Shawn Allen and Daniel Burka last week. Initial comments from on-lookers have been both rather skeptic, and rather ecstatic. I’m part of the second group, Pownce is everything a Twitter user could wish for plus more. I have mulled it over for a few days before segregating my personal opinion.
Firstly, I’ll put it right out there. I am right behind Twitter, I love the idea and originality Twitter brought to the table when it launched back in March 2006, I have no current plans to leave the service. However, for a two week old service, Pownce has thoroughly impressed me through both form and function. Pownce improves on Twitter’s current feature set and in addition, includes a few extra features which differentiate it from Twitter.
The Essentials And Extra Additions
Pownce is very similar to Twitter from a quick scan. You add friends, post messages for others to read, and generally connect with other people. The difference is, Pownce adds to these features in a highly functional and appreciated way.
For example, messaging. When you post you have four options. You can post a Message, Link, File, or Event. Clicking on one of these dynamically refreshes that element of the page to reflect your posting choice. Your second choice is to chose who the message is intended for. The default setting is for “all my friends,” however this can be changed to either the public, or a specific person - in other words, Pownce can be used to connect with just your friends, the general public, or one specific person. Very handy for different instances and uses.
More specifically, you can set groups for different contacts. For instance, if you have a lot of Developers and Bloggers on your friend list you can conviently create a seperate Group for them. When posting, this group will be an option alongside all friends, the public, and individuals. This is essentially useful if you just want the Bloggers to know about your latest post, or just want the Developers to see a link you’ve posted to the latest Expression Engine build.
If you’re a Twitter use, you’ll be familiar with the process of using @YourNameHere to reply to others tweets. Pownce takes the art of replying to others in a whole new direction, just like Digg, Pownce has a threaded message system for replying to specific messages. This makes the process of holding a conversation very functional and easy to grasp a hold of.
To further test out Pownce as a tool of communication I asked my friends to post a quick one sentence review of Pownce in reply to my message. I received around 20 replies which can be found here. Below I’ve displayed a selected few which represented the views of a few different individuals.
Patrick Yan. Great web app from the $60 million man, Kevin Rose—but the lack of mobile (updating & browsing) and a real desktop app is keeping this from becoming as popular as Twitter.
Jeremy S. Pownce is basically a souped up version of twitter without the external inputs like texting and Instant Messages. Even though Pownce is currently small, I can see a bright future headed toward it.
Matt Brett. Seems like a lot of people are forgetting that Pownce is less than a week old and invite only beta. If this is beta, I can’t fu**ing wait to see what they have in store for 1.0!
Chris Marshall. I think Twitter is great for ’statements’ and has been massagd to death to allow conversation. Pownce has way more potential for developing discussions, building communities, and faciliating viral marketing
But I Want To Use Both
I’ve heard this statement numerous times over the past few days. People wanting to use Twitter in conjunction with Pownce instead of pick a favorite are in luck - you can cross post messages to both services.
The blog JetPacked has posted a brief tutorial on how to forward messages you post on Pownce directly through to Twitter.
Go to TwitterFeed.com and login with your OpenID. Create a new Twitter feed and enter your information. When asked for a feed, type in http://www.pownce.com/feeds/public/username. Select the frequency of posting. Be sure to deselect “Include description.”
This process will be handy for those who want to post messages to one service, but have them distributed to both. For now, I’m sticking with individually posting to both Pownce and Twitter, although cross-posting has struck me as a good solution for keeping involved in both.
A Very Strong Initial Release
Overall, Pownce hasn’t fail to impress. It’s a solid service which I assume I’ll be in constant contact with in the future. There are a few things I’d like to see added and improved on in the future, just like hundreds of other early adopters. Some features I’d personally be pleased to see in future updates include the following.
- Improved Desktop Application. Something which matches up to the elegance and functionality of Twitterrific, Pownce the desktop app needs thorough work if they want to take the service to the next level and be a realistic contender to Twitter. Kevin Rose, get in contact with the team at The Iconfactory and start talking. Period.
- Remove Default Email Notifications. Within hours of signing up to Pownce my inbox was full with over 50 automated emails notifying me of friend requests and messages. Please, have these turned off by default.
- Online Indicators. Allow users to see friends who are currently online by displaying a green indicator next to users logged in, and red next to users offline.
- Official iPhone Compatible Web Application. Move one step ahead of Twitter by developing an official version of Pownce directly compatible for the iPhone. There is yet no solid solution from Twitter for iPhone tweeting, here’s a perfect opportunity to gain one extra step in the race.
- Statistics. I’m a big fan of statistics, I enjoy seeing numbers rise (or fall) live, play by play. This isn’t an essential feature but it’d be “fun” to be able to view stats on your profile including how many messages you’ve sent, and how many times your profile has been viewed. Taking this a step further, how about Top 10 lists for various categories.
Conclusion
Overall I’ve been immensely impressed with the value Pownce has added to my online experience. I’ve felt so much more connected over the past few days - Pownce really is Twitter with all the trimmings you could wish for from a service which is only at version 1.0.
If you wish to add me on either site, feel free to do so. My Pownce profile is located here, and my Twitter profile is located here.
What are your thoughts about the Pownce vs Twitter clash? Which do you think will win the race, and most importantly, which are you using the most?
July 4th, 2007 at 11:35 pm
Good article Glenn. Like you I will continue to use both;
http://twitter.com/myapplestuff and http://pownce.com/chrismarshall
for two very distinct activities. Twitter I love for ’shout outs’ and picking up an overall picture of what my friends are up to, Pownce I will use more for research, feedback, promotion of the blog etc and of course for distribution of information. If pushed I would say twitter = play, pownce = work.
Nice heads up on the message forwrading. IF all goes to plan I will have a Pownce plugin up on the site this week :-)
July 5th, 2007 at 12:00 am
I’ve been sat watching/reading the whole debate about Twitter and Pownce for the last week or so, and I will admit that initially I didn’t see the point in Pownce. But, the more I read, the more I realise it’s not just a direct copy of Twitter. I’m interested to see where this goes. I don’t yet have a Pownce invite, but I would relish the chance to try it out.
July 5th, 2007 at 12:25 am
Pownce looks decent enough. Twitter seems pointless to me for some reason. Pownce could be beneficial in most ways. Pownce got a lot of its features from .mac though.
July 5th, 2007 at 4:40 am
add sms and we can start thinking about other uses.
i’m using twitter for severall things, including sms to friends and family, and i’m not ready to give that up.
sharing files (small ones: 10 mb!) can be done from a lot o different places.
i would love to love pounce, but i need some things working there to justify making the leap.
July 5th, 2007 at 5:07 am
If anyone has a invite, they wanna give away - I would gladly accept it. I really want in on Pownce.com :’(
July 5th, 2007 at 5:17 am
Ye i would like to have a play around with pownce if anyone has an invite okease send too jdgreen05@gmail.com
But i agree with what you say Glenn i think that it is more than just a shout out it has the extra features and if kevin, leah and the rest of the team keep working on it, it will become much more successful!
July 5th, 2007 at 7:55 am
Good post, but I disagree with the notion that Pownce is “Simply Twitter plus more.” Though the structure is similar, very rarely do I use Twitter anymore; the idea itself is pretty pointless. Unless someone is sharing an interesting link or an important message, I really don’t care about “what they’re up to.” Sorry!
Pownce however capitalizes on the potential of sending cool information. With encouragement of links, files, and events, it’s turning into a useful feature that Facebook has had for a while - posted items, but is much more focused. Features such as being able to send items to only certain “groups” of friends are excellent. I can see Pownce becoming way more popular (and useful) than Twitter in the near future.
July 5th, 2007 at 9:40 am
As mentioned earlier a plugin is available if you want to show your latest Pownce posts on youir site;
http://www.chrismarshall.ws/?p=771
July 6th, 2007 at 8:26 am
I just joined Pownce this morning, and so I have yet to really try it out. I’ve been a Twitter member for a while, but I rarely update. I don’t see the need to tell the world and the few friends I have on the site what I’m doing every minute of the day. I guess if I had more contacts it would be used more often.
I like the idea of sending links and files to friends and the public, and how Pownce enables you to send messages only to specific people. I’m going to continue to use Twitter and start using Pownce more often and see what they’re like and which one I use more often.
Just for the sake of getting more friends to test out Pownce to its fullest ability, here’s my profile: http://pownce.com/peternorris
July 6th, 2007 at 8:56 pm
I find Pownce has much more functionality that Twitter, which really puts it a step ahead in my eyes. I love not having the 140 character limit.
July 6th, 2007 at 11:49 pm
I just signed up with Pownce I like it thus far. It is the next step in function and looks like a really winner.
July 9th, 2007 at 6:45 am
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-Geoffrey
July 9th, 2007 at 8:35 am
Hello !
It’s a nice article you wrote to compare the 2 services. However I’m asking myself : Is really Pownce a twitter with extra feature ?
2 month ago I decided to give a try to microblogging and after some reflexion, selected jaiku and not twitter. Why will you ask ?
Jaiku has :
- Good looking (I can be “proud” to show my jaiku… I won’t be so with twitter).
- Easy to reply or interact with other people
- ability to graphically customise it ( ok a little )
- ability to add feeds.
After subscribing to Pownce (via an invitation), I find it as jaiku is but without 2 jaiku’s limitations :
- You’re not limited to 140 characters when you post. However I like this limitation on jauku, because it constrains you to write the essentials. (We’re dealing with MICROblogging after all)
- You can add files you may share.
But :
- I regret the lack of icons in posts, but it’s not a major drawback.
- You can’t add extras feeds.
For my points of view, pownce is similar to jaiku. And honestly today, I don’t know which from Jaiku or Pownce, I’ll really keep.
Olivier
July 18th, 2007 at 5:11 am
Hmm, I do need an invite :)
October 10th, 2007 at 2:54 pm
Pownce needs an API, and people. It’s just like Virb VS Facebook. People are at Facebook, but I prefer Virb. Same sort of thing, Virb needs an API, and people, and Pownce needs the same. Twitter and Facebook have great APIs, and great people.
Twitter FTW!
Facebook FTW! (wait… did I actually say that????)