Pownce, now open to everyone
Written on 22nd January 2008
4 COMMENTS 
Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, Serial Internet Entrepreneur
Pownce launch party
About 27 minutes ago Pownce went live and out of closed beta. If you know all about Pownce but didn’t get in before head over there now and get an account.
If you haven’t heard about Pownce before read on. Pownce was founded by Leah Culver (a speaker at The Next Web Conference 2008), Kevin Rose and Daniel Burka and went into closed beta about 6 months ago. Pownce is “a way to send stuff to your friends. What kind of stuff? You can send just about anything: music, photos, messages, links, events, and more. You can do it all on our web site, or install our lightweight desktop software that lets you get out of the browser.”
Although the founders have denied being a Twitter clone from day one you can’t help but seeing some similarities. Where Twitter keeps things extremely simple and depends on outsiders to build extra services on top of their API Pownce is much more versatile and offers a lot of extra functionality right from the start. Pownce is all about sharing stuff (Events, urls, photos, contacts) and Twitter is more about talking about what you are, or are not, doing.
People unimpressed with Twitters interface and options but interested in interacting with a community might want to check out Pownce. For a detailed report of the new features check this post on Techcrunch and Mashable.
The Next Web Blog is closely associated with The Next Web Conference which is held annually in Amsterdam, The Netherlands. At this event speakers from all over the world come together to talk about, and show off, the future of the Web. (More info 
By Mathijs van Abbe on Jan 22, 2008
Too bad they still don’t have a fully functional API. This would give make the service much more competative with Twitter. Posting using the API is not supported yet, which of course is crucial for developers.
But will keep an eye on them….
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By Wouter Broekhof on Jan 22, 2008
Argee about the API thing, that’s what basically gives Twitter its value. They should get more developers.
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By Lennaert on Jan 22, 2008
I Second that Mathijs & Wouter. We’re waiting now for ages for write rights in the Pownce API. But it’s good they’re open now. Hopefully it’s a good sign for further development :)
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By David Petherick on Jan 22, 2008
I’m still trying to work out how to actually come across unknown people who are interesting and active in Pownce, which I think is part of the reason for twitter’s success.
However, I did notice that my name appears on a few pownce friend lists in a Google search, as I use my real name as my username.
I think their servers may be having a busy time, as all I’ve seen in the last few minutes when adding a friend was ‘Please be patient… We’re processing your request’ :-(
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