Farewell Admiral Ackbar
Monday, December 1, 2008 at 04:17PM Leah Culver, co-founder and developer of Pownce, blogged today about the demise of the peer to peer based social network. As an early adopter of the site, I am a little sad to see it go.
First off, Pownce is the only social network where I snagged my first name as my username. I am going to miss being just /neha! Other than that, I did really enjoy "Music Video Monday", "Desktop Thursday" and "Foto Friday." Pownce was a great tool to make friends on Flickr, and view and share all types of multimedia. I loved Pownce for all the cool things I was exposed to-- whether it was an exceptional rock climber with a hippie name, or a remixed version of "Man who Sold the World," one of my favorite Bowie tracks. Also, the community was really growing; I had over 1,000 friends & fans. 
On the flipside, I can see why they may want to scratch this and start again. Six months ago, both Twitter and Pownce had their fair share of outages which enraged all of us. Twitter got on the ball, and the Fail Whale is now a relic. Conversely, I was frustrated with the amount of Admiral Ackbar I was seeing when logging on to Pownce. It worked well in the beginning, but it seemed the more people used it, the more /500 or /400 error messages I received. There was also is unexplainable white screen when I logged in that wouldn't go away unless I refreshed 3 times. I will not miss these knickknacks and hope the next product from the team will run smoother.
My last Pownce post (before the shut down announcement) was: "Who prefers Pownce over Twitter?" Most of the replies said both served different purposes. I would have to agree, but find myself not struggling with the 140 character limit as much as I used to on Twitter. Historically, I preferred Pownce, but because of all the bug errors I started using Twitter much more.
The last day of Pownce will be December 15 and there is a way to import all your notes into Wordpress, Vox or Typepad. I know that Leah will be a great addition to SixApart, and will create some social networking tool that is ever spiffier for all of us. And for all of you Powncers out there, there is always Twitter and Facebook. I know, it's not the same, but we'll have to wait for the next big thing. Goodbye Pownce and good luck Leah +team!
Leah Culver, Pownce, SixApart, Twitter in News, Ramblings, Social Networking, Websites
Reader Comments (6)
I'm all about web 2.0, but I STILL don't get the point of these micro-blogging services. The best I can conclude, is that it is because people don't generally know how to subscribe to an RSS feed of a blog. So it helps get more "followers".
I also get the PR side of tweeting. Do anything to get more public light. But, I don't need PR. So why do I need Twitter? I don't care about what someone had for lunch. And, if I want to follow someones blog, I'll subscribe to their blog. I don't need to be told on Twitter that they have a new post up on their main blog.
I'm not flaming it at all, I'm just reaching out to see if there's something that I'm not thinking about that makes Twitter something I need to add to my online life. I really have racked my brain and tried to listen to people answer this question to no avail.
I propose all those mini daily memes on pownce be ported over to twitter, you just won't be able to post them inline like you could otherwise.
@bfos7215 microblogging isn't the same as a blog, it's a short burst of [insert emotion here] whereas blogging is more thought out.
it's about keeping up with friends not pr.
Also Neha as an aside you have two things to validate that a user isn't spam, isn't one enough? I'll quit whining now.
I'm sad to see it go too. I link to my profile on http://sarahaustin.net so I'll have to delete that link too. Too bad!
I really will miss Pownce, I think it looked a lot better than anything else. I never saw Microblogging as the emotive dribble it is often stereotyped as, with the Threading feature in Pownce I saw it more of an open web forum
And I too covered this topic on my own blog; http://www.thisaintnarnia.com/2008/12/pownce-perma-ackbard/
I will certainly miss Pownce because even tho in ways it was like Twitter it certainly wasn't Twitter. The fact we could share pictures and files was something of a big bonus and also not forgetting the community was really wise and smart and could get discussions up really quickly. It will be missed as a pro subscriber tho I won't be taking up their Typepad offer.
@bfos7215: I think the point of Pownce was a place to share more thoughts, without the character limit.It also was a great place to get exposed to new music, art, and even videos.
@Robert:I definitely had my share of "spammy" friends on Pownce--that's when they got Fan'd!
@Sarah Austin:I have to do that too..it's pretty sad.
@AndrewLittler+ @Damien: I will miss Pownce b/c I feel like I had a lot of friends there who also had great music & art taste! There aren't many social networking sites where P2P is a feature.