Is it time to Pownce?
Well, I’ve been looking at the recent trend of products such as Twitter and Jaiku and wondering if there is really a good reason to bother. Enter Pownce. Pownce is another one of these ‘what am I doing now’ apps, but I kind of like it so far.
First, you can use their website or a client built on Adobe AIR. Because of that, it’s cross-platform on Mac and Windows (Linux coming soon.) Secondly, it is created by a company that includes Kevin Rose. If you don’t know Kevin, he’s the main guy behind Digg, and was on TechTV and G4 for quite awhile. He’s generally pretty spot on on technology, so if he’s working on something, I take notice.
Now what Pownce does is it allows you to send messages, links, events and files to your friends. They can be private or public, and you can group your friends into different groups. So, I could have a Lotus User group, a Fantasy Football group and a Family group. I could then send messages, or links, or files to everyone in a particular group. Messages can be almost like a mini-blogging concept when a whole post is not needed. Or even a way to let people know where you are.
It’s an interesting concept, but you really need to get a base of the same friends all using it all the time to make it work I think. Right now Pownce is invite only, but I have five invites available. If you want one, leave me a comment with the email to send it to. We’ll see if this thing can really take off.
July 26, 2007 @ 11:51 am
I’m in Pownce, too. We should connect in there. I’ve got several invites to distribute, so if you get more requests than you can handle, let me know.
I think it’s an interesting system. The only use I’ve come up with, from a practical perspective, is to allow a Quickr-like private forum area. Gmail’s conversation views perform a similar function, but only for people who use Gmail. I toyed with the idea of inviting several friends just so we could discuss Harry Potter 7 without worrying about spoilers. People added later can see the previous discussion, so I could add folks as they finished the book. I haven’t done it, though, because I don’t know anyone at all (other than you, now) who is using it.
July 27, 2007 @ 10:30 am
You slackers, old news
ha. I have a link that I used to connect Pownce, Tumblr, Jaiku and Twitter into one posting that hits them all.
July 27, 2007 @ 11:16 am
Like a Trillian for those services huh?
How did you go about doing that? It sounds really helpful…
Now I need to find a good pownce blog widget too…