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Mashable! by Stan Schroeder on Jun 28, 2007
Described as a mishmash of existing services (Twitter, chat, file sharing) that has only attracted attention because its founder was behind Digg, things didn't look good for Pownce. We expected the worst: but like the iPhone, Pownce miraculously lives up to the hype. Don't judge it before you test it.
I have a confession to make. I've used Twitter, and I wrote about it a lot, but I never could quite understand why it's so damn limited. Instant-blogging aside, it's web based instant messaging - but it's done in such an impossibly silly way - you can only send messages to everyone, and people won't engage in conversations because they have other friends and those friends don't want to hear your private chat. So, it's just a bunch of mindless, one-way messages.
And, if you already started to write a comment about how Twitter has private messaging, I know about that. But, it isn't done very conveniently, it doesn't have much features, and, again, it defeats the purpose of Twitter: it's just a poor man's IM.
On the other hand, ever since Twitter first appeared, I wondered why the hell don't IM clients simply add Twitter-like functionality - it doesn't seem that hard. Because, as you might know, IM is great for one on one conversation, and you can also chat, but if you want to send one file to three friends, or one link to all the people that are working on some project with you...well, in most cases, it kinda sucks.
Enter Pownce, Kevin Rose's latest startup, which we were extremely skeptical about when it first arrived on the scene less than 24 hours ago. Who needs yet another IM client, we wondered. Well, we still stand by that: it IS just another IM client. But this one simple feature, for an IM-junkie like me, is vital.
Send files to one person, everyone, or a group of people - we've been waiting for this feature for all our online lives.
And it is this: on Pownce, you can send a message, or a file, or a song, or an event, to one person; or three of your friends; or only your family; or everyone. That's right, you can engage in private conversations, you can speak to the world, you can have a group of close friends, and a group of associates, and a group of unknown people you just added to your profile, and you can choose when you want to send stuff to any of these groups. With this simple feature Pownce trounces all over Twitter, and comes close to being more useful than most IM clients.
As far as other options go, Pownce has themes, which are nice for simple pimping of your profile; it also has solid filtering options for your messages, which makes your life much easier (try to find that link someone sent you 6 days ago on Twitter).
Furthermore, it has it's Adobe AIR desktop based version, which - although still in alpha stage - works without any obvious glitches. It has problems, though - it's just a simple interface for Pownce and it gives you only a small fraction of its features. This will not be good enough - you're competing with IM, not only Twitter here, Kevin - it needs to be a full featured desktop client - think Miranda and Gaim.
Pownce Themes - how do you want to look today?
Although seemingly just another IM app, Pownce brings enough cool features to the table to make us want to leave all our IM services behind and switch. But, therein lies a catch - it's easy for me to switch, but how will I make all my friends and family and business associates to switch? To keep track of all the various protocol people use for messaging, I use Miranda. And I sure as hell hope that Pownce's protocols are done in such a way to enable Miranda/Gaim/Trillian support, because without it, it will be much harder for people to become real everyday users.
Recommended: Piczo Stuff at Mashcodes!
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