At the end of the day, without an open API, pownce is far less useful to me. Not having SMS support makes pownce less interesting, I'm not always in front of my machine, and find the ability to tweet while out and about part of its charm. Not being about to automagicly send links from del.icio.us and my shared google reader stories as links in pownce limits the uses I have of that feature.
For Leah's and Kevin's sake I do hope she's right, I'll be keeping an eye on it but suspect they'll be less interest until it's opened up.
Kolya Miller
· 2 years ago
Can't someone develop an "Export friends" function, that converts, say twitter friends to vcf's that can be imported into my address book? Or maybe into Pownce? or export friends from Pownce into Twitter etc?
That would be sweet.
K
LayZ
· 2 years ago
The better question is, how do either of them plan to turn a profit?
Robert Scoble
· 2 years ago
Pownce has ads in between posts. All of these could charge for additional features, too. I'd pay $5 a month to have longer posts, for instance.
Deepak
· 2 years ago
Twitter is by far the simpler to use and IMO is a better microblogging platform. Pownce is better looking and I find it better to communicate with friends (the sets feature is cool).
Adam
· 2 years ago
Pownce is a much better system in my opinion.. Not only am I able to select which kind of message I want to post, it seems to be a bit more polished of an interface than Twitter.
Part of Pownce's appeal, at least right now, is the fact that it is a closed beta. It's much like Gmail was back in the day. There is a certain coolness if you can say "I have a Pownce account." Of course, Kevin Rose helps, too.
@Sean: Not having SMS support is a pain, however, I don't use the SMS support of Twitter that often. In fact, make that not at all. When I do a status update, it's from the computer. Sure, though, I'm probably in the minority. I do hope that they do implement one, though. I know that Jaiku has one, but they don't have a US shortcode yet and I don't even want to see what Verizon would charge me to text overseas.
@Deerpak: The friends feature is another plus of Pownce. I can choose whether a message goes just to them or to the world.
-A
Ben Gold
· 2 years ago
Scoble, next time you join a social network, try what I do, only accept friend requests from people you know or have heard of before, just try it, you get a different experience and the network becomes useful.
Robert Scoble
· 2 years ago
Ben: out of the 4400 friends I have on Twitter I've heard of more than half. I have more than 6,000 business cards, and have met a LOT of people in my travels. Remember, at Microsoft I interviewed more than 500 people and since leaving Microsoft I've interviewed about 300 more.
So, even if I just put the people I've interviewed into a social network that's an unwieldy number.
Ben Gold
· 2 years ago
ok fine,
PC
· 2 years ago
I've not got a Pownce ID, so can't comment (literally!)...if someone wants to kindly send me an invite ;)
But, I'm with you on the overload of all these services. I don't think I really need another presence app or social network (guess that's my Pownce invite scrubbed)
I tend to revert to Twitter because it's a doddle to use and does one thing well, and people I know are on there - makes it pretty sticky for me.
Have to say that at Reboot the jaiku backchannel was really, really useful. Seems to me that the expansion of that feature could be killer.
Cameron
· 2 years ago
Facebook all the way. I don't see the point of Twitter at all. I see why Pownce might be better for sharirng things on mobile with friends, but to be honest I am sticking with the Facebook. All my friends are there. I have no motivation to move to Pownce.
monk.e.boy
· 2 years ago
I wish these guys would just write something cool that I could host on my own server. Why would I invest all that time and energy filling their server with cool stuff?
I'd like a MySpace, twitter and pwonce plugins for my server. Then I could join in. If I felt like leaving, I just disable the 'communications' part of the plugin. All my data is still with me. I'd still have my MySpace comments and songs.
I guess the plugin would be like a little app that I buy for £10, and then pay 50p a month to keep in the conversation. I get a little API key and a password hashed against my server address. The plugin does everything else.
Every plugin would have a minimum requirements say: PHP, Python, Perl, Ruby and MySQL.
That kinda sounds like the BitTorrent version of MySpace.
One day.... all my.... dreams will... come true....
monk.e.boy
Michael Walsh
· 2 years ago
I have a pownce account, but I don't see the use of it. I've restricted my facebook to not just people I know in real life, but my actual friends. For keeping in touch with people and organising events/meetups, facebook really is the tool for it because you can accept/decline meetings AND upload pictures too. pownce doesn't do that well, I can't see the magic there.
I take absolute exception to what Leah Culver says, pownce DOES NOT SCALE well. Login to pownce and then view kevin rose' profile. It will either timeout or take a very long time to load. I don't know what crazy queries they are running or if it's powered by a slow DB server, but even with the limited number of people, it crawls.
Given the limited number of operations you can carry out on pownce - even when logged in and the webapp is STILL able to get itself into a terrible state in many of them. Pownce really is no google.
Duncan
· 2 years ago
Robert she may be talking about scalability, but as a Pownce Desktop Client user I can clearly say that the strategy is failing. The is NO justification for delaying an open API other than suicide by Pownce: the Pownce desktop app sucks and the only real long term chance Pownce has is opening the platform up to 3rd party developers. Is you need validation ask Patrick to run Twitteriffic and the Pownce app side by side on a Mac. :-)
Chris
· 2 years ago
Scoble, can you actually bring your camera to the offices of Twitter and Pounce, so we can see what they look like?
I read this today, and I know that VA Linux started up in an apartment. I would really like to see their place instead of them coming to see you. Like a Scoble show version of cribs. Thanks. How can we really know who has the best offices if we can't see them?
Chris
· 2 years ago
It would be interesting to see how different office environments of these startups measure up to each other and even use them as a point of reference for our own. I know youtube used to post pics of their offices too before they were bought by google. It would seem that the crappier your office(apartment/garage), the more successful you become. Some may not consider this important, but I think it would be good information to have as a visual record.
Raimo van der Klein
· 2 years ago
Hi, great that you found our video of Jyri's talk. Hope we can make many more great videos through our Mobile Monday events(www.mobilemonday.nl)
Whenever you are on a Monday in the Netherlands check our Meetup. You are more than welcome ;-)
jquig99
· 2 years ago
I love Twitter and it's already been integrated into my routine - I don't even think "I need to post this on Twitter" because it's just a natural course of action now. I've been on Pownce less than a week and I'm already seeing the same kind of routine-integration. I just need a desktop app like Twitterrific to make this experience complete.
I also think the simplicity of Twitter and the API development will provide growth and continual adaption by mainstream users (as well as us early adaptors) and with new adjunct apps like Twittergram, new and better business uses will be found.
Ben
· 2 years ago
Without SMS and an API Pownce is one step behind twitter. I am sure they will add both.
My main surprise is your main feed on Pownce is not loaded and reloaded via ajax. You have to manually refreh the page. No wonder the servers are slow. Send a message or two every few seconds or wait for whole pages to reload. Hmm.
Pownce: Don't be so concerned with page hits. Be concerned with the ease of use of the product and the advertising dollars will come. To me, Pownce seems to be being built to best serve a quantity of ads, not quality to it's users.
Melissa Maples
· 2 years ago
I agree with what you say about the simplicity of twitter. I always think it's funny when one developer makes something purposefully simple - "look how straightforward our app is, it only does this one really fun thing!" and then ten other developers come along and say, "wow, look how unnecessarily complicated we can make it! Now it does a hundred things you don't need it to do!"
I have a pownce account and though I tried to use it to send a couple of files this morning, the dismally poor desktop app failed halfway through and my upload got hosed, which caused me to just forget the whole thing, upload the file elsewhere, and link to it on twitter where all my friends are anyway.
Ryan
· 2 years ago
Competition is good and I'm glad to see competing applications duke it out. I use Twitter because it is simple and it integrates into Facebook. It doesn't need to be fancy. That's the appeal of Twitter.
Pim de Groot
· 2 years ago
I've been using twitter since a week now and I like it because it's very simple to use. But it wouldn't matter if i used pownce, since i dont use cellphone stuff or something that uses the API.
I would like to try out pownce because it has a nice looking UI and you can also share files, next to messages and links. The only reason I haven't been able to try it out is that you need an invite.
vaspers the grate aka steven e
· 2 years ago
Pownce is better than Twitter because:
Pownce enables you to attach mp3s or other files to your message.
Pownce has better display of link attached to message.
Pownce enables you to group your Friends in sets.
Pownce has accurate "in reply to" to respond directly to a specific message, while Twitter makes an @username reply go only to the most recent message of the person you are replying to, so when you click on the "in reply to", it may go to the wrong message, and that causes confusion, a dysfunctional linking for the conversation.
Pownce enables music bands to distribute new mp3s to a community of fans, if they are on Pownce and in your Friends list. That's the tricky part: building the community to benefit and promote to.
Chris: we'll have a video of Jaiku up today. Unfortunately it's not in their offices, but in a hotel room in San Francisco.
I'll try to get to the others as well.
Paul Chaney
· 2 years ago
As my friend Andy Kaufman says, "Twitter and Facebook is the social networking power duo." I agree. I think, when the smoke clears, Twitter will win the day for its simplicity and API.
In my book, one strike against Twitter is that it's design reminds me of MySpace, which I've never been fond of. (Pownce looks much nicer and reminds me of Facebook. :->) Yet and still, the fact that its a closed system at this point (including that fact that SMS is not enabled) makes it less useful to me.
Lindsay
· 2 years ago
One feature that would make me switch is an API interface you can invoke as a regular i.e. non-techie user. See Bravetrail, where members post messages to 'robots' which carry out useful tasks on the their behalf.
Mark
· 2 years ago
I am amused by the media race for 'most friends'. For a self promoting machine like Scoble and his cronnies, this may mean something... but for those of us in the real world quality is much more important than quantity.
Social networking is a great mechanism for referrals and as a way to increase the accuracy of information (people like me buying, doing, etc). Running a fan club and leading your own parade is certainly and interesting twist...
Paul Chaney
· 2 years ago
If I might add one other point worth making, what is needed is a greater degree of aggregation so that it's not either/or, but both/and. The internet in its current iteration is X number of digital islands, what a friend of mine refers to as an archipelago. What's needed, and the Web 3.0 will eventually bring this about, is a pangaea.
While we wait on the Web 3.0 to arrive, a short-term suitable solution for integrating more of our digital social life might be to route everything through Facebook. Seriously, both Twitter and Pownce have Facebook widgets. I'm not sure about Jaiku, which I've never used, but, heck, them too!
Considering the number of applications merging with Facebook, including things like Zoho's open office, Box.net's file sharing, on and on, it's not inconceivable to think Facebook might become a portal to access all the functions of our digital lives.
"I just saying." :-)
Joe
· 2 years ago
Who will win? The one bought up by Google, of course. :)
Aidan Henry
· 2 years ago
I don't think you can compare the two in the first place. I wrote a post entirely dedicated to why they should be grouped in different spaces:
I'm finding a lot of great music on Pownce. I love sharing stuff too, and can filter just links or just files. That reduces the noise a lot. That also reduces my own noise. It's already been observed that I'm not spammy on Pownce, but that's probably because Twitter seemed to evolve into slow-motion IRC (with logs)
I paid 20 bucks to go Pro.
Should this really be Pownce vs. Tumblr and not Pownce vs. Twitter?
I think Twitter is a better choice because it is more user friendly.
nick
· 2 years ago
From a UI perspective, Pownce wins hands down. Keep in mind that it's a totally immature product and Twitter has been out for a while. Once (I'd guess it's only a matter of time) Pownce has an open API and SMS support, and the desktop client runs a little more smoothly, I can definitely see it kicking the crap out of Twitter. It's a much closer race right now, but I think the fact that you can even compare the two this early in the game (for Pownce) is a nod in Pownce's direction over the long haul.
Hi there. I just now came across this article. I am a user of both Twitter and Pownce and don’t think a comparison between the two really works. To me it’s like comparing a window to a door. They are both on a house, but which one is better?
We created a new site for people who miss Pownce called Schmownce (http://schmownce.com).
All Comments
I understand that the instability of twitter is something that scares anyone building such a service.. but as Calacanis said if twitter down time is any indication they are going to be 2x as big as EBAY. We all remember how ebay was back in the day.
At the end of the day, without an open API, pownce is far less useful to me. Not having SMS support makes pownce less interesting, I'm not always in front of my machine, and find the ability to tweet while out and about part of its charm. Not being about to automagicly send links from del.icio.us and my shared google reader stories as links in pownce limits the uses I have of that feature.
For Leah's and Kevin's sake I do hope she's right, I'll be keeping an eye on it but suspect they'll be less interest until it's opened up.
That would be sweet.
K
Part of Pownce's appeal, at least right now, is the fact that it is a closed beta. It's much like Gmail was back in the day. There is a certain coolness if you can say "I have a Pownce account." Of course, Kevin Rose helps, too.
@Sean: Not having SMS support is a pain, however, I don't use the SMS support of Twitter that often. In fact, make that not at all. When I do a status update, it's from the computer. Sure, though, I'm probably in the minority. I do hope that they do implement one, though. I know that Jaiku has one, but they don't have a US shortcode yet and I don't even want to see what Verizon would charge me to text overseas.
@Deerpak: The friends feature is another plus of Pownce. I can choose whether a message goes just to them or to the world.
-A
So, even if I just put the people I've interviewed into a social network that's an unwieldy number.
But, I'm with you on the overload of all these services. I don't think I really need another presence app or social network (guess that's my Pownce invite scrubbed)
I tend to revert to Twitter because it's a doddle to use and does one thing well, and people I know are on there - makes it pretty sticky for me.
Have to say that at Reboot the jaiku backchannel was really, really useful. Seems to me that the expansion of that feature could be killer.
I'd like a MySpace, twitter and pwonce plugins for my server. Then I could join in. If I felt like leaving, I just disable the 'communications' part of the plugin. All my data is still with me. I'd still have my MySpace comments and songs.
I guess the plugin would be like a little app that I buy for £10, and then pay 50p a month to keep in the conversation. I get a little API key and a password hashed against my server address. The plugin does everything else.
Every plugin would have a minimum requirements say: PHP, Python, Perl, Ruby and MySQL.
That kinda sounds like the BitTorrent version of MySpace.
One day.... all my.... dreams will... come true....
monk.e.boy
For keeping in touch with people and organising events/meetups, facebook really is the tool for it because you can accept/decline meetings AND upload pictures too. pownce doesn't do that well, I can't see the magic there.
I take absolute exception to what Leah Culver says, pownce DOES NOT SCALE well. Login to pownce and then view kevin rose' profile. It will either timeout or take a very long time to load. I don't know what crazy queries they are running or if it's powered by a slow DB server, but even with the limited number of people, it crawls.
Given the limited number of operations you can carry out on pownce - even when logged in and the webapp is STILL able to get itself into a terrible state in many of them. Pownce really is no google.
she may be talking about scalability, but as a Pownce Desktop Client user I can clearly say that the strategy is failing. The is NO justification for delaying an open API other than suicide by Pownce: the Pownce desktop app sucks and the only real long term chance Pownce has is opening the platform up to 3rd party developers. Is you need validation ask Patrick to run Twitteriffic and the Pownce app side by side on a Mac. :-)
http://wap.usatoday.com/detail.jsp?key=645489&a...
I read this today, and I know that VA Linux started up in an apartment. I would really like to see their place instead of them coming to see you. Like a Scoble show version of cribs. Thanks. How can we really know who has the best offices if we can't see them?
Whenever you are on a Monday in the Netherlands check our Meetup. You are more than welcome ;-)
I also think the simplicity of Twitter and the API development will provide growth and continual adaption by mainstream users (as well as us early adaptors) and with new adjunct apps like Twittergram, new and better business uses will be found.
My main surprise is your main feed on Pownce is not loaded and reloaded via ajax. You have to manually refreh the page. No wonder the servers are slow. Send a message or two every few seconds or wait for whole pages to reload. Hmm.
Pownce: Don't be so concerned with page hits. Be concerned with the ease of use of the product and the advertising dollars will come. To me, Pownce seems to be being built to best serve a quantity of ads, not quality to it's users.
I have a pownce account and though I tried to use it to send a couple of files this morning, the dismally poor desktop app failed halfway through and my upload got hosed, which caused me to just forget the whole thing, upload the file elsewhere, and link to it on twitter where all my friends are anyway.
I would like to try out pownce because it has a nice looking UI and you can also share files, next to messages and links. The only reason I haven't been able to try it out is that you need an invite.
Pownce enables you to attach mp3s or other files to your message.
Pownce has better display of link attached to message.
Pownce enables you to group your Friends in sets.
Pownce has accurate "in reply to" to respond directly to a specific message, while Twitter makes an @username reply go only to the most recent message of the person you are replying to, so when you click on the "in reply to", it may go to the wrong message, and that causes confusion, a dysfunctional linking for the conversation.
Pownce enables music bands to distribute new mp3s to a community of fans, if they are on Pownce and in your Friends list. That's the tricky part: building the community to benefit and promote to.
http://twitter.com/vaspers
http://pownce.com/vaspers
I'll try to get to the others as well.
In my book, one strike against Twitter is that it's design reminds me of MySpace, which I've never been fond of. (Pownce looks much nicer and reminds me of Facebook. :->) Yet and still, the fact that its a closed system at this point (including that fact that SMS is not enabled) makes it less useful to me.
Social networking is a great mechanism for referrals and as a way to increase the accuracy of information (people like me buying, doing, etc). Running a fan club and leading your own parade is certainly and interesting twist...
While we wait on the Web 3.0 to arrive, a short-term suitable solution for integrating more of our digital social life might be to route everything through Facebook. Seriously, both Twitter and Pownce have Facebook widgets. I'm not sure about Jaiku, which I've never used, but, heck, them too!
Considering the number of applications merging with Facebook, including things like Zoho's open office, Box.net's file sharing, on and on, it's not inconceivable to think Facebook might become a portal to access all the functions of our digital lives.
"I just saying." :-)
http://www.mappingtheweb.com/2007/07/04/pownce-...
Let me know your thoughts...
Cheers,
Aidan
I paid 20 bucks to go Pro.
Should this really be Pownce vs. Tumblr and not Pownce vs. Twitter?
Here's how I'm using all the services:
http://www.ericrice.com/blog/?p=597
Twitter = chat room; Jaiku = aggregator; Facebook = address book
I've been written something about this discussion...Twitter x Pownce, in portuguese on my blog.
Anyway, I'm giving 3 Pownces invites in a promotion of my blog. Who wants... http://tradutorium.wordpress.com/2007/07/03/pro...
:-)
No dice.
It definitely has some issues, though. I blogged about desktop client issues here in case you're interested:
http://www.nickbouton.com/archives/2007/07/07/p...
We created a new site for people who miss Pownce called Schmownce (http://schmownce.com).
Also, I wrote this article, which I think is a more useful comparison: http://ajitfoldsfive.tumblr.com/post/71266576/w...