Pownce
Pownce is an online service that launched during the last week of June 2007. It lets you send things to people, like links, files, events and messages. Sure you can do that with email, but where’s the fun in that?
From the day it released, Pownce has been compared a lot to Twitter. Pownce has a desktop application and Twitter doesn’t. Twitter supports IM and SMS and Pownce doesn’t.
The fact is that both services have different purposes and for that reason, you can’t compare them. Twitter was created to answer the question “What are you doing?” and it’s doing that in a very simple way whereas Pownce was created to move files around by people who “were frustrated trying to send stuff from one cube to another” (Pownce about page) and it’s also achieving its goal in a very simple way.
One of the greatest things about Pownce is the sharing aspect and the possible feedback from a lot of people with different backgrounds and life experiences. The age range goes from prenatal to after death. Of course I’m exaggerating, but I know there’s a 15-year-old teenager and a 50-year-old podcaster who are part of that community.
When you send something, your friends and fans can know about it via the website or the desktop application and they can reply to your message. Your messages on Pownce can spark interesting conversations in an interface that is much more user-friendly than email. The notes can be filtered by messages, events, links, files, replies and users. It could benefit from a search feature.
The desktop application uses the latest technology from Adobe AIR. It’s very lightweight and updates every minute. It could use a little more features like replying straight from the application and viewing other people’s replies.
Pownce is free to use and for $20/year, the ads go away and you can upload files up to 100 MB. It’s a fun way to have interesting conversations with people. Even though it’s not even a month old, a big community is shaping itself around Pownce. Even though everybody’s a stranger and you’ll never meet anyone there, it’s like you’ve talked to them your whole life.
I have some invites left. If you’re interested, leave your email.
