Mashable - The Social Media Guide - Latest Comments in Lessons to Be Learned From Pownce’s Demise

Re: Lessons to Be Learned From Pownce’s Demise

Frederick Townes — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 22:22:18 -0000

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Re: Lessons to Be Learned From Pownce’s Demise

Frederick Townes — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 22:22:05 -0000

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Re: Lessons to Be Learned From Pownce’s Demise

Frederick Townes — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 22:21:49 -0000

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Re: Lessons to Be Learned From Pownce’s Demise

Frederick Townes — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 22:21:33 -0000

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Re: Lessons to Be Learned From Pownce’s Demise

Frederick Townes — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 22:21:10 -0000

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Re: Lessons to Be Learned From Pownce’s Demise

Frederick Townes — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 22:20:45 -0000

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Re: Lessons to Be Learned From Pownce’s Demise

Frederick Townes — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 22:20:27 -0000

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Re: Lessons to Be Learned From Pownce’s Demise

Frederick Townes — Mon, 02 Feb 2009 22:20:06 -0000

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Re: Lessons to Be Learned From Pownce’s Demise

joanned — Fri, 05 Dec 2008 12:06:56 -0000

pownce was so pretty.

Re: Lessons to Be Learned From Pownce’s Demise

gwhilts — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 18:03:08 -0000

Pownce had three big problems:

1) The "Network Effect". Everyone was already using Twitter (when it was up) even core Pownce folks.

2) No API == no TweetDeck, Twitterific, WP Plugin, ...

3) No SMS.

Re: Lessons to Be Learned From Pownce’s Demise

Mike — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 07:59:46 -0000

you are so right!
hope that netppl.net gets some of pownce features!

netppl.net/mike

Re: Lessons to Be Learned From Pownce’s Demise

Gabe — Wed, 03 Dec 2008 01:11:47 -0000

Pownce, the product, failed in that it didn't get traction and it no longer exists now.

Re: Lessons to Be Learned From Pownce’s Demise

abby — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 22:44:00 -0000

"Just because there may be more cokroaches than humans, it doesn't make them better and successful" ... It was truly hilarious. Microblogging services are those cokroaches. Twitter and similar micro blogging services are just a fad fueled by hyper active VC community looking for a smart exit. (remember podcasting?)
Pownce failed because microblogging is a poor business idea... Twitter may defy gravity for some more time... (till media and advertising dollars dry up) but it would have a similar fate very soon.

Re: Lessons to Be Learned From Pownce’s Demise

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Re: Lessons to Be Learned From Pownce’s Demise

Chun — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 16:19:09 -0000

@Alinna hit the key point - people rules in social apps. We easily talk about twitter culture, what's pownce culture?

In web1.0, the competitive edge was about "better, faster, cheaper", so google can beat inktomi and yahoo, salesforce can beat Sieble. Social apps certainly demand different type of competitive edge to be extremely social.

Re: Lessons to Be Learned From Pownce’s Demise

Tom Altman — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 15:46:34 -0000

I wonder what would have happened if Pownce would have embraced Twitter? Like allowed to pull in Twitter's feed...

Re: Lessons to Be Learned From Pownce’s Demise

valleymonger — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 14:58:21 -0000

what the f^*k did 6A do?

1. 6A just laid off people. Why are they spending money in this crappy company? (i know, friends are for these moments, but all has a limit, or should have).

2. â€œacquiringâ€ a company because the â€œâ€valueâ€" of their team sounds so much like 99 (aka, yahoo buying broadcast.com). If there are 2 engineers worth at pownce, why not let the company shut down completely and then hire them? itâ€™s not that the market is super hot and they would have a job the next dayâ€¦

again, all this is very disappointing (note that i am not saying â€œsurprisingâ€), and shows once more that there is a small group of â€œcoolâ€ people running great part of the bay areaâ€™s internetâ€¦

some may say that the 6A layoffs were a covered way of firing some of their underperforming employees... But the 6A executive team cut their salaries by something like 10% together with the layoffsâ€¦ would that make them underperformers as well?

i get the point (made by some people) of covering the need/will to fire some people with the veil of layoffs, a nicer concept both for the employee getting sacked and for the manager (who hired poorly), but given the current state of the markets (financial and real), I still wonder why they are spending money in a company that has people like culver and ariel waldmannâ€¦

maybe 6A need new underperforming employees for their next round of â€œlayoffsâ€?

Re: Lessons to Be Learned From Pownce’s Demise

JonnyD — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 14:53:50 -0000

I think what some people failed to even think about or mention about pownce is that while it was feature bloated on it's web interface it had no good API or SMS access. This means all those people who are not bound to a browser all day like myself have limited access to the site VS twitters very efficient API and SMS system.
I have friends who still have the default icon because they have never visited the site once, they use it purely through their phones. This combined with it's api is a powerful aspect that disconnects the service from the browser and allows everyone to take it everywhere... THIS in my opinion is what really makes Twitter the superior service, not some kind of brand loyalty or `FIRST!`.
I have a pownce, I used it once and when I discovered they have no SMS piece and no good phone apps it immediately was tossed aside and ignored, it was obvious to me that they thought they could take the system and beat it by added all this stuff but in the end they failed to add what made it popular in the first place... the concept of "micro-blogging is blog from anywhere"

Re: Lessons to Be Learned From Pownce’s Demise

@AndrewSansone — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 14:02:31 -0000

With so many social media platforms now to keep up with -- less is more focused and manageable.

Re: Lessons to Be Learned From Pownce’s Demise

twitterfail — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 12:39:05 -0000

Twitter & the concept is ridiculous. I can't wait for this stupid iTrend to die off. Seriously, no one cares what you tweet, not even your friends. And, it was quickly picked up by the advertising media, which just shows you how "cool" this isn't. FAIL.

Re: Lessons to Be Learned From Pownce’s Demise

Pete — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 12:24:20 -0000

Poorly marketed? Pownce had an all star team and got endless coverage. I can think of no major tech blog that failed to cover it.

Marketing is certainly not the issue - it's far more strategic. They came out with a product that was, in the public mind, very similar to an existing product that had already passed the tipping point. By the time Pownce launched an API, there were already thousands of applications for Twitter - it was an ecosystem while Pownce was still a standalone tool.

Re: Lessons to Be Learned From Pownce’s Demise

Fabio De Bernardi — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 11:03:32 -0000

@Shira @Dave Kinsella - The way I read it is that the team should be very good / worth an acquisition but the product isn't and don't fit into Six Apart's strategy, which is not necessarily the worst thing in the world, but it sounds to me like the proof that the current service didn't succeed. One thing is a service and another is the team behind it.
Anyway, I don't want to judge anyone (even because I don't know anyone at Pownce) and I don't know the future plans of Six Apart / Pownce, I just wanted to point out that shutting down a service can be rarely called a success - for that service at least.

Re: Lessons to Be Learned From Pownce’s Demise

Bart Vickers — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 10:56:10 -0000

I think it's also important to remember that while Twitter enjoys some first-mover advantages, from a simple numbers perspective they have relatively small penetration. Twitter's users are exponentially more passionate and vocal than they are numerous. What that means is that a second mover with a broader market penetration strategy could very realistically pass Twitter up. Twitter would be left as the smaller, perhaps elite, "we were here first" niche-within-a-niche.

And this is all assuming that there is broader, genuinely mass appeal for microblogging. It's absolutely possible that microblogging is attractive to only a small percentage of the overall population and will never be a "mass" channel. Again, it feels a little like the rush to Second Life a couple of years ago.

Re: Lessons to Be Learned From Pownce’s Demise

Shira — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 10:52:20 -0000

@Fabio - we don't know what their exit strategy was. If it was to be bought (as so many companies exit strategy is) then it was a win. At the end of the day most companies value is in their human capital.

Re: Lessons to Be Learned From Pownce’s Demise

wDating — Tue, 02 Dec 2008 10:41:33 -0000

Pownce has been bought, I wonder how much they paid for , anyone know?