Looking forward to giving this a try, it looks like a great alternative to Twitter, although I can't provide any views until I've tried it out personally.

Tried http://jaiku.com?

Nope Andy, but I'll have to give Jaiku a thorough lookover whenever I manage to wake up. Thanks for the suggestion.

I really would like to see it first hand. It seems to be pretty sweet and the buzz is all ready all over the net.

Can I get an invite to Pownce? My email is edit-xtreem (at) iappblog (dot) com

So let me get this straight Phil... Twitter bores you but:

Twitter rip off+file transfer+advertising+limited friend network+no mobile phone support = excitement?

Did I miss something here because it *seems* like this is just a Kevin Rose fan-boy post and not an objective analysis of Twitter vs. Pownce. I'm not saying that it *is* mind you, just that it *seems* that way.

And for the record, the Iconfactory had no involvement in the UI design for its desktop application, so I'm afraid its the former.

Thanks but no thanks, I'll stick with Twitter.

This is like the whole "Twitter will get killed by Jaiku" argument. Case in point: It never happened. It's hard to get all of your friends to continuously migrate to all of these new services. I think that many people are getting sick of signing up for all of these things. The appeal of Twitter is that just about all of my friends are onboard, with only a few dipping their toes in the Jaiku pond. In this case, it'd probably be easier for me to fire off an email or post a Facebook item/event then convince everyone I know to signup for Pownce.

I am looking for these applications to come to the companies, what some people like to call E 2.0.

I just wrote a post on MS Dynamic blended to Popfly (the next best thing) to be lead this pack of applications.

Mario Ruiz
www.oursheet.com

Pownce is the new Twitter !

One of your arguments is that Twitter's down and Pownce isn't, but you're also omitting one significant fact: Twitter's also not in closed beta, while Pownce currently is. When you control the number of users (and therefore the volume of traffic), it's a lot easier to manage the load on the servers. If Pownce has no downtime once they open it up, then you can start making arguments regarding downtime, but for now it's apples and oranges.

And I'll concur with Aaron's point. Pownce could be the best service ever, but it needs to get all the Twitter users to abandon Twitter and move over to Pownce (or, at the very least, provide a service like TwitKu (http://www.twitku.com) to facilitate double posting. Even with TwitKu, though, I barely use the supposedly superior Jaiku because none of my friends are using it.

I never really got into Twitter, but seeing it being widely adopted has me interested in diving in a little further. Perhaps Pownce will be my entry point.

Hi Phil - got here via Mathieu's twitter just now.

No SMS onto the phones? Whew, that's gonna be a killer.

Thanks for the detailed review for those of us who don't have an invite yet even though I twittered that I'm willing to work along side Scoble's son

[...] Si son ustedes lectores de este blog, sabrán que por aquí no somos muy amigos de Twitter. Todo ese universo de exhibicionistas y voyeurs no ha conseguido tentarnos, pero somos conscientes de que ese tipo de nuevos microformatos van a abrir canales de contenido a futuro. Quizá el primer freno de Twitter es que vale para muy pocas cosas más que cotillear y en eso tiene muchas desventajas frente a servicios de orden superior como, por ejemplo, FaceBook. Tiene la inmediatez y la ligereza, pero le falta el cuerpo de interés. Desde que salió apenas si ha mejorado y era normal que le saliesen rivales con verdaderas ganas de superar la moda momentánea y no con la única intención de clonar la fórmula. Kevin Rose, padre de Digg, ha presentado hace unas horas (junto con un grupo de socios) Pownce, su visión de la nueva lógica de la Red. Si a priori se puede parecer a Twitter, supera a su predecesor en las funcionalidades. Del ideal primero del ‘dospuntocero’ de enseñar se pasa a la vocación madura de compartir reduciendo el ruido. Pownce es la esencia más ligera de una red social conjugada con las ventajas de los nuevos formatos: vale para comentar, pero también incluye herramientas más completas para enviar archivos entre usuarios, compartir eventos y gestionar recomendaciones. La idea es mejor, el éxito dependerá ahora del ruido limpio que genere. PD: Si quieres una invitación, insulta a Scoble. [...]

Care to send a invite to me to try out pownce ?

Gedeon has it spot on. Kevin Rose (Asshat from here on in) has decided to use his name to get another of his sites to beat a simpler, more established site at its own game. Asshat hired a good designer, and some good coders. Then he said, "um, we should probably add a few features so this doesn't look like a total rip-off...". So here come file-sharing (which is interesting; if they had just used that and left out the messages or txt input I would've been fine with this) and a bit of filtering. It's interesting, because it's obvious Asshat and co. don't realize how blatant they're being. But yeah, it'll probably rise over Twitter, and become kind of cool and keep getting feature bloat. Hooray.

Until then, I'll stick with Twitter, thanks.

That said, I'd love to be proven wrong by trying it out. Got a few invites, Phill? My email was submitted .

Looks kind of like a less ridiculous Facebook. Facebook has the worst UI ever conceived. It would be nice to have something fresh to play with. Without texting though, and no word of support for it, I'm not sure how you can compare pownce to twitter.

Hey Ged,

I hear ya about the UI similarities, but I don't really see the point in calling me out for being Kevin Rose fanboi here when the reality is, I love Digg, but am no significant fan of Kevin the person. Furthermore, I think I've been more of a fan of the IF than anything else, so yeah...

Let me go through your points:

Twitter rip off+file transfer+advertising+limited friend network+no mobile phone support = excitement?

Rip off? Yes, kinda like how Apple swooped in on Xerox Parc imo. It may not be ethically correct, but we're both using and loving our OS X UI right?

File transfer... I transfer a lot of files. This is actually kind of useful for me.

Advertising? I don't even notice on the site, and if I can go by Digg, I doubt it'll ever become obnoxious, thus I don't really care.

Limited friends network? Yes, for now, because it just started, I dunno, 24 hours ago? But what Kevin has set up is a pretty alluring viral ploy with the invites / closed beta, and that almost never fails in snowballing fast. Besides, since when did Twitter really have a huge friends network? A lot of people I work with have accounts, but zero school friends. Zero.

And about the UI stuff, that blows. I'd raise hell if I were in your position probably. (Think the other "Rose", Arlo.) You never know. Good luck to you guys.

*sigh*

Really? Dipping to the Xerox business?

The graphical UI is something the whole industry now uses, and I'm tired of it being the constant "BUT RIP-OFFS ARE COOL RITE GUYZ?!!!!" argument.

The simple fact is, Pownce (on the surface—maybe using it would change my mind) blatantly adopts the sole idea behind Twitter and spins it out as original, altering little UI-wise or purpose-wise. I'd love what the Pownce guys are describing: easy file-sharing and event-sharing. But it's obvious only AFTER deciding to copy the twitter UI and model did Pownce decide to add these killer features. Had Pownce just been about file and event sharing, or had a very different UI for displaying the "pownces" of your friends, dandy. Sadly, that's not the case.

Still would love to be proven wrong

Emmet, I mean, that's the thing. I always saw Twitter as a bit underdeveloped, and furthermore, focused for the Web 2.0 / geek crowd, and not designed to be mainstream. In that sense, I was getting frustrated seeing Twitter add no big features in the couple months I've been a member, and I think others were too. (Market inefficiencies usually get filled fast.)

I don't even want to get into the ethics here. I don't think Pownce was the most ethical decision no. But a good business decision? Sure.

Sorry but I certainly wouldn't bother with a company that requires you to obtain an invitation to use their service. How stupid is that? If I want to use a service, than I want to use it NOW. Not when I get an invitation! What is that? I'll stick to Twitter and Jaiku!

I would love an invite!

I like Twitter's fairly simple interface. I took a brief look at Pownce and found the updates harder to read.

I go through many pages of updates a day quickly, so having a more "feature-rich" page may actually be a drawback. I think Twitter does a good job of giving simple access links to other features while keeping the page clean.

Of course, there's lots of possibilities for new features, but by the time Pownce is fully available, I suspect Twitter will have more functionality, too.

Functionality is nice, but usability is key!

[...] June 29th, 2007 at 1:34 am (Twitter, Pownce, phone, sites, apps, Joost) Well, it’s Pownce Day Two and already the Internet is on fire with Who Has Pownce Invites? and Pownce vs. Twitter, OMG!!1!  It’s funny though because I’m sort of buying into all the hype.  I’ve looked at a few Pownce accounts and they look magnificent.  I must say, the Pownce team did what seems to be an amazing job with the design of the UI.  I’m hoping the hype holds up.  Speaking of hype, I’m a little curious of the timing of the invite-beta announcement.  The iPhone hits tomorrow.  It’s a safe bet that tomorrow after 6pm everyone will be blogging/talking/twittering (HA!) about the iPhone.  Why release the Pownce beta now?  I think Kevin Rose being a major player will help keep the interest alive, I just think they would’ve been better off waiting two of three weeks.  Although, it seems like anything web 2.0 that’s invite only will always generate buzz.  Just look at all the Joost invite craziest of six months ago.  Anyways, I found two good articles on Pownce here and here.  Also, if anyone has any invites, throw one my way, andrklein at gmail dot com. [...]

@Montse:
You say, "Sorry but I certainly wouldn't bother with a company that requires you to obtain an invitation to use their service."
Yet the email address on your blognot profile is a gmail account...gmail was invitation only for quite some time.
Pot. Kettle. Black.

Pownce and Twitter should be evaluated for what they are, not for who's behind them or how they came about. If it were unethical to do something better simply because someone else had done it already, then we'd have just one of everything, wouldn't we? Is it unethical for Facebook to exist because Friendster came first? (Well, I think it did; if it didn't, replace with generic and .)

I don't know Kevin Rose, so the fact that this is his deal makes no difference to me. The things that *do* make a difference to me are:
- my friends are on Twitter.
- AIR apps are ugly and clunky and AIR Pownce looks too much like Twitterrific.
- file transfer rocks.
- custom friend groups/sets are cool.

From the perspective of someone who has no personal interest in either company, who is joe schmoe end user, Pownce is stepping in and doing what Twitter could've already done, had they the infrastructure to support it or the wherewithal to think of it. At the end of the day, though, no matter how cool Pownce ends up being, it'll stagnate and go nowhere if the users don't migrate from Twitter. Right now, I don't see that happening.

Twitter offers ease of use conducive to immediate adoption and integration into one's workflow. Pownce is potentially cooler, but also geekier. Greater flexibility makes Pownce more complex. It's not as easy to tell exactly who the recipients of your message are or how to respond directly to a message - both most likely symptoms of an alpha client. I'd love to see AIR abandoned in favour of a Cocoa client, but that might just be a personal bias. Pownce is off to a great start and has loads of potential, but it's far, *far* too soon to label it doomed, a Twitter killer, or really anything at all.

Cain, justG, agreed, and thanks for pointing all of that out.

[...] Nach dem Blogeintrag von Phill Ryu will ich ehrlich gesagt nix mehr von Twitter wissen und nur noch einen Pownce invite code! So wie es scheint wird Twitter sich deutlich ins Zeug legen müssen damit die Jungs von Digg der Twitterei nicht davon powncen. [...]

I am *NOT* excited about Flash as a platform; it sucks enough on the web, I don't need it sucking up my desktop with crap apps. You can't select text in the Pownce desktop client, which I assume is an extension of how bad Flash sucks and often doesn't allow you to select text in any other form (AFAIK, it's an option of Flash, but not by default; retarded).

The Pownce concept is cool, bringing more community and sharing features to the table, but I think they're going to have a very long road ahead of them. Twitter is already being mentioned in most major publications across the US, including the New York and LA Times. Jaiku is now often being mentioned as the runner-up and feature-packed competitor to Twitter, leaving Pownce and all the other clones hardly any wiggle room.

@ Phill: What's your Pownce username? I got an invite...

@ Glenn: Want one?

Smaran, my username is phillryu.

David, I'm not discounting mainstream media, but I wouldn't underestimate the power of viral invites either. (Small example, MacHeist stealth launched without a single press release or many news posts, but we quickly gathered tens of thousands of users over a couple weeks with it in closed/invite only mode.)

But not a fan of the flash desktop app either. (For one, Windows close/minimize widgets, yuck.)

[...] At the moment its kind of buggy in IE and there is stuff missing that I would quite like to see (more ways to post: from mobile, email, IM) but it’s unfair to judge it too harshly. Twitter has got a head start and naturally has more tools on offer and a larger community to micro-blog along with. I can’t comment on whether this will be the “Twitter killer” some have hailed it as, but I quite like it so far. Bookmark to: [...]

You pretty much hit the nails on the head. Good review and comparison. Thanks.

Great review. Enjoyed the depth of this and the comparison to Twitter. Thanks.

Yes, great review. You must be very proud. The Good, the Bad and the Ugly headings are also very original. (I have only seen them on about ten to twenty other blogs last month.)

Oh, and can we get bigger Digg buttons, please? It's very hard to hit those small ones. I'd love to digg your posts. They're very interesting. Honestly!

OMG - Pownce is so cool - Can anyone spare me an invitation code? Please? binderskagnaes [at] GMail [dot] com

Thanks!

Philip yeah Pownce may have more features but there are so many downsides to Pownce: invite only, ads, fewer users, etc. Sometimes less is more.