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December 20, 2007

Is Pownce Going To The DeadPool?

Michael Arrington

68 comments »

Uncov has a very funny post on the demise of Kevin-Rose-founded-Twitter-clone Pownce, noting that their traffic seems to have fallen to the point that “Even TechCrunch can’t save you now.” The image above is taken from their post.

That may or may not be true, but when you look at Pownce v. Twitter on Compete.com, the difference doesn’t look quite so brutal. Still, there is probably only room for one Twitter in this world, and Twitter itself seems determined to hang in there.

Pownce, previously a one-person shop (developer Leah Culver), has started to hire people and is looking for office space. We’ve also heard Culver doesn’t like Pownce being called a Twitter-clone. But the shoe fits quite nicely in this case, and the clone moniker stands. Sure, there are differences. But it isn’t different enough.

  • Sphere It

This entry was posted on Thursday, December 20th, 2007 at 7:01 pm and is filed under Company & Product Profiles. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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  1. Pownce not pouncing anymore? | Wired Gecko

    December 20th, 2007 at 11:28 pm

  2. CenterNetworks

    December 21st, 2007 at 6:22 am

  3. If Pownce Is Headed For The Deadpool, Then Is Mint Headed There Too?  »TechAddress

    December 21st, 2007 at 8:03 am

  4. Adam Chernow

    December 21st, 2007 at 10:05 pm

  5. Pownce 将死？ - 花儿开了

    December 24th, 2007 at 7:27 am

  6. Pownce 将于 1 月 22 日全面开放 - 漫步

    January 10th, 2008 at 5:04 pm

  7. Pownce Opens To Public Tonight At Midnight; Early Screen Shots Of New Features

    January 21st, 2008 at 4:36 pm

Comments

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  1. Fred Oliveira

    December 20th, 2007 at 7:12 pm

    Wow, that picture note - harsh. I did giggle, though ;-)

  2. Miley Cyrus

    December 20th, 2007 at 7:15 pm

    Ever since Kevin Rose started to appear on glossy magazines with that arrogant model look, it was clear that he is finished as an entrepreneur. Do you remmeber Pierre Omidyar or Sergey Brin posing like models on magazine covers BEFORE their companies became liquid?

  3. Steve Spalding

    December 20th, 2007 at 7:16 pm

    Honestly, I always wondered what the hype about Pownce was. It’s an interesting bit of code insofar as it does what Twitter does with a slightly different slant.

    That being said, there is really nothing about Pownce that –

    a. Can’t be done more quickly with email.
    b. Can’t be done more interestingly with Twitter.

    As a widget, Pownce is good enough but I had hoped to see a big move towards differentiation in the months since launch. It just hasn’t happened, and I suppose this is the result.

  4. Pratham

    December 20th, 2007 at 7:20 pm

    Perhaps tumblr is a more worthy clone ?
    http://siteanalytics.compete.c.....?metric=uv

  5. Zakk Frocholli

    December 20th, 2007 at 7:24 pm

    Twitter clone? I dont think so lol. Deffinetely used differently.

  6. Sabas

    December 20th, 2007 at 7:29 pm

    They don’t have SMS as a feature (moblie version, but that’s it)
    The Adobe AIR app sucks. Where’s the IM?
    I’m trying to find use for it, but there’s not enough good features that seperate it from Twitter/Jaiku.

    Twitter has the userbase, and even with the issues they have (downtime), it doesn’t seem like they’ll be slowing down anytime soon.

  7. Dawn

    December 20th, 2007 at 7:31 pm

    Pownce was pretty but it doesn’t offer anything I wasn’t already doing some other way.

  8. sage

    December 20th, 2007 at 7:38 pm

    i think it’s good we see every now and then some well-known folks biting the dust in their second, third, whatever venture. it shows it takes more than being famous to be successful. pownce, mahalo, seesmic, whatever… they have a huge advantage, but the key in the end is still EXECUTION. and honestly, if despite having that advantage they fail, well… you do the math.

  9. Intercon

    December 20th, 2007 at 7:38 pm

    No shit.. twitter only has less than 500K users for a year??! I thought it had 5M…

  10. Dave Winer

    December 20th, 2007 at 7:47 pm

    If Pownce wanted to be aggressive they could carve out a niche in a world dominated by Twitter by:

    1. Making their API a clone of Twitter’s so developers would have minimal work to do to support Pownce and

    2. Show through the “payload” feature they have that Twitter doesn’t that would enable applications for voice and photography, which has real potential.

    There is lots of room above Twitter, but Pownce hasn’t been doing anything to try to bring on the developers who build on Twitter.

    Ask the Twitter folk about where the value is — it’s in the architecture taht allows developers to fill in features they’re missing.

    PS: I think it’s really going to freak out the Uncov guys that you’re recognizing them. :-)

  11. Duncan Riley

    December 20th, 2007 at 7:54 pm

    I’m not sure if Pownce is heading to the deadpool, but having seen the shots on Valleywag there’s little doubt that Uncov’s startup will be, presuming it even gets off the ground. Karma is a terrible thing :-)

  12. Vance

    December 20th, 2007 at 8:00 pm

    Actually I was much more impressed with pownce than twitter. Twitter from what I can tell is just a bunch of people posting a bunch of mundane meaningless junk, it’s novel but not much more. Pownce really didn’t seem geared toward that. It seemed more focused toward communication and collaboration, toward work groups. In that respect I think it’s got alot more potential that twitter long term.

  13. Adam Healey

    December 20th, 2007 at 8:05 pm

    Hmm.

    This bird still don’t tweet.

    http://www.vibeagent.com/blog/.....ont-tweet/

  14. Andrew Arnott

    December 20th, 2007 at 8:08 pm

    All Kevin needs to do is promote the service on Digg for a while and it would catch on, not sure why they haven’t done this yet…

  15. drew olanoff

    December 20th, 2007 at 8:09 pm

    Twitter took a while to get off of the ground. Not saying the same will go for Pownce, but it’s fact :)

  16. Ryan Cates

    December 20th, 2007 at 8:13 pm

    Pownce is as good as dead. They have no one behind it like Twitter does. No one is talkign it up. Interweb wonderboy Mr. Rose doesn’t put himself out there as the face of Pownce. If he is using Pownce then he’s only letting a chosen few see his messages. Every once in a blue moon he lets the pleebs see something he’s wrote and they are generally Digg promotions. Without Mr. Rose leading the charge Twitter will win out no matter how “different” Pownce tries to tell us it is. Heck maybe Mr. Rose isn’t even a factor anymore in the popularity of something and has lost the luster he once had?

  17. trafalgar

    December 20th, 2007 at 8:21 pm

    Some ideas work, most don’t.

    The bigger lesson to Rose and others might be that me-too ideas work even less frequently.

  18. Adam Healey

    December 20th, 2007 at 8:23 pm

    I’m a genius.

    Wait, here me out.

    Twitter must have the lowest ratio (6.4) of users (500,000) to related blog entries (78,343) around.

    This is not a good thing.

    This means that although Twitter gets tons of coverage, the market for its services just ain’t that big. Of course, being able to get press is a good thing, so a company shouldn’t be penalized for being able to get its name in the papers….up to a point. Once it reaches a threshold - and I would argue that Twitter passed that threshold long ago - then a company’s inability to convert press into users is clearly a sign of market weakness.

    And Marc Andreessen - fellow genius! - understands that a bad market beats a good product every time: http://blog.pmarca.com/2007/06.....-gu-2.html

    So, I don’t know how many users Pownce has, but they can take solace in the fact that they only have 7,000 related blog entries on Technorati. That means that as long as their number of registered users is greater than 50,000, and I’m sure it is, then there may be a bigger market for their product long-term than Twitter - they just need to get their name in the paper more often.

    I know…I know. ;-)

  19. Anatoly

    December 20th, 2007 at 8:28 pm

    “Culver doesnt like being called a Twitter clone” - Yeah I heard that someone once called her a twitter clone in high school, and she really resented that.

  20. Paul Montgomery

    December 20th, 2007 at 8:32 pm

    @ #11: Duncan, you are tempting fate mate. Karma works both ways…

  21. ROFL

    December 20th, 2007 at 8:42 pm

    Pownce.

    More like pwnced.

    That website is fucking garbage.

  22. Michael Arrington

    December 20th, 2007 at 8:47 pm

    Anatoly - yeah, fixed that.

  23. Intercon

    December 20th, 2007 at 9:14 pm

    @18 Adam
    Twitter’s People Count: 469914
    Pownce’s People Count: 85218
    per that http://siteanalytics.compete.c.....?metric=uv for 11/2007; plus the def of -
    People Counts are also known as unique visitors - they only count a person once no matter how many times they visit a site in a given month. People Counts are typically used to determine how popular a site is.

    So, apple-to-apple ratio is 18% (pownce popularity to twitter popularity)

  24. Mim

    December 20th, 2007 at 9:19 pm

    Digg itself is heading to the deadpool in the not too distant future …

  25. Adam

    December 20th, 2007 at 9:20 pm

    See… I like Pownce better than Twitter. Especially the part where I can type more than a 160 characters.

  26. Ryan Cates

    December 20th, 2007 at 9:39 pm

    @24Mim I’ve been thinking that too lately. I think the core group that helped build it into what it is today has matured and moved on to getting their news from other sources.

    @25Adam You can type as much as you want, but in the end, is there anyone at the other end of the transmission? It’s that lack of a limit that’s keeping it from reaching into the SMS world and handcuffing people to the web for their Pownce experience.

  27. Adam Healey

    December 20th, 2007 at 9:41 pm

    Intercon,

    That’s interesting - so, while Twitter has 10 times more press coverage than Pownce, at least in the blogosphere (and really, does anything else matter?), they only have 5 times the traffic/user base, understanding we’re oversimplifying a few factors. By that math, again, assuming Pownce invests in marketing, their uptake should be more efficient that Twitter.

    If you look at the market based on share of attention span, I think facebook is clearly a competitor to both companies. And thus, bottom line is: grow the size of the addressible market by expanding feature set, partnering with or creating new distribution channels (APIs), or merging with competitors (ala Kayak and Sidestep)!

  28. Miley Cyrus

    December 20th, 2007 at 9:52 pm

    I deleted digg form my igoogle page about 3 months ago, and so did most of my friends. I do not like frat parties.

  29. Q

    December 20th, 2007 at 9:53 pm

    How do you call Seesmic - video Twitter?

  30. Adam

    December 20th, 2007 at 10:19 pm

    @Ryan: Yep… I have a few friends on there. Actually, more people respond there than do on Twitter. Not as much as facebook, though.

  31. Imao

    December 20th, 2007 at 10:35 pm

    I don’t know what the big deal is with “twitter-clone” - it makes no sense to me.

    What is twitter? - “post a message to a webpage and share with your friends” - its the root concept which isn’t exactly new …. in fact its very old.

    It shits me that people say just because other websites have done this its a “clone”. Twitter doesn’t even have a fking business model. WOW - offer a service for free, eat up VC cash and wait to be acquired …… hang on there! it has no IP at all and its a site whose features could be copied in around 1 month with a good team ….. so ?

    Pownce will get there - twitter, im not so sure. I think its problem is that “It’s simply too simple.”

    Let me ask you this Mike - myspace could clone twitter pretty easily - twitter = deadpool?

  32. Ballmer

    December 20th, 2007 at 10:44 pm

    Told yah!

    fakesteveballmer.blogspot.com

  33. Seth

    December 20th, 2007 at 10:53 pm

    Arrington ,

    The comment “even techrunch can’t save you now” is arrogant and reflects the fact that with fame and power comes vanity .
    Micahel, don’t forget that the readers have made TC and the most valuable content are the comments. They can vanish in a blink.
    No, and don’t tell me it’s a geeky sense of humor.

  34. Intercon

    December 20th, 2007 at 11:02 pm

    @27 Adam
    >assuming Pownce invests in marketing, their uptake should be more efficient that Twitter.

    Presumably so.. if product is sound.. and if Megatechtronium (ie., Pownce) owner(s) get some good deal with Digg Inc (obvious of some shareholders overlap).. Digg’s popularity is still nothing short of being impressive -

    Digg’s People Count per compete.com is 17689209, ie., 38 times of Twitter’s, 208 times of Pownce’s, for the same period, according to compete.com.

  35. Derek

    December 20th, 2007 at 11:04 pm

    Pownce should quickly white-label itself and aim for a “behind the firewall” appearance. Twitter users have been clamouring to use this medium in the enterprise, and this move could save Pownce, especially as ERP vendors are hauling out their wallets for E2 eligitimacy in their software.

  36. Alaska Miller

    December 20th, 2007 at 11:06 pm

    @33

    Did you fail out of high school or are you just incapable of reading?

  37. wojai

    December 20th, 2007 at 11:13 pm

    >Twitter doesn’t even have a fking business model.
    Not necessarily.. see the adsense render the lower-right of, say, this page -
    http://timoreilly.jaiku.com/
    (yes, jaiku, not twitter, but not much diff)

  38. Vinod

    December 20th, 2007 at 11:16 pm

    Twitter with it’s nice APIs has become the ‘command line’ for many other web services. It is an integral part of that Eco system. Pownce needs to find a better offerings if it deems Twitter as a competitor.

  39. Evan

    December 20th, 2007 at 11:23 pm

    Wow #33 you are an amazing individual.

  40. Datetopia Dating Software

    December 20th, 2007 at 11:55 pm

    So what can this do and a standard desktop instant messenger application can’t?

  41. Jacob F.

    December 21st, 2007 at 12:35 am

    Well, IMHO Pownce is more well rounded than Twitter, so it might gain as people get tired of Twitter. Also, Alexa rankings show only statistics of users of the Alexa toolbar - hardly representative of your average internet user…

  42. Anatoly

    December 21st, 2007 at 12:51 am

    @33 Thats Lord Arrington to you.

    I think the phrase shows humility, he could easily have written “Only Techcrunch can save you now”, but that would be copyright infringment on Scoble.

  43. I Am Not Posting To Spam My Blog

    December 21st, 2007 at 1:57 am

    @33

    The comments are the most valuable thing? Yes, where would we be without all those green names and their insightful input such as “Great post!” and “I find this very interesting” and “We must do something about water pollution”.

  44. Parul Bindra

    December 21st, 2007 at 2:20 am

    Kind of feels like Pownce is losing a little steam, but that is probably just because they not having the kinds of social circles on the system that really show off how it works. In other cases, I think they are not pushing their focus as a web-focused “sharing stuff” service. Twitter is a way to get messages out in multiple platforms like SMS and AIM — it makes Twitter almost a protocol as well, one that turns its service and API into something unique and valuable. Pownce needs to find something similarly unique soon, lest they just become a place that anti-Facebookers flock to.

    Parul
    http://www.bhopu.com

  45. Yako

    December 21st, 2007 at 5:03 am

    I insist Kevin should get a PR firm immediately.

  46. Zeke Williams

    December 21st, 2007 at 5:35 am

    See the real issue with all these sites and the claims of x amount of users signed up… Is really how many of those users actually USE the system on a regular basis.

    I mean if you have 1 million users, but only 10% use it daily, 20% use it weekly, 30% use it monthly and the rest have only used it once in a blue moon or just signed up and did NOTHING with it… what is its real value?

    It is HOW it is used, not how many use it that really counts.

  47. Andrew J Scott

    December 21st, 2007 at 5:40 am

    Those Twitter stats just reinforce my humble opinion that Twitter has been massively over hyped and over flaunted for what it is. What has it achieved…? They cant even keep their relatively simple application up reliably, even months post VC funding.

    …but who am I to judge? As Calacanis fanatically shouted at me at NMK Forum in London this year “You’re just jealous!” .

    Of the hype? maybe; of the consequential lack of traffic and users (relative to hype) and continued server downtime? certainly not.

    I don’t know one person outside geekdom who uses Twitter. After a year burgeoning with Twitter hype, surely that should tell us something?

  48. Sarah Meyers

    December 21st, 2007 at 5:53 am

    Pownce still has 100,000 people daily. They are not going to the deadpool.

  49. Sean McGee

    December 21st, 2007 at 6:36 am

    At least the pownce website is more stable.

  50. Erik

    December 21st, 2007 at 6:38 am

    The Twitter audience seems to be about the same size as the TechCrunch audience…

    Hmm…. coincidence?

    http://www.alexa.com/data/deta.....ize=Medium

  51. mmt

    December 21st, 2007 at 7:38 am

    All of my friends are non-techie and none of them have even heard of Twitter or Pownce. Most of them haven’t even heard of Digg. Mainstream adoption has been close to nil.

  52. Seth

    December 21st, 2007 at 8:10 am

    @ evan - thanks. Appreciate it.

  53. All I want for Christmas is a Python django developer

    December 21st, 2007 at 9:45 am

    All I want for Christmas is a Python django developer.

    Seriously.

  54. Santa Claws

    December 21st, 2007 at 11:12 am

    COMPETE AND QUANTCAST???

    are a JOKE - take ANY VC-funded company, and it shows high there and low on Alexa.

    I WONDER WHY?????

  55. Shawn G

    December 21st, 2007 at 12:35 pm

    Wait, aren’t Pownce and Jaiku both still in private beta? How is it fair to compare something like Twitter which is open to everyone to two sites that you have to have an invite to get into. Now it is true that Pownce invites are easy to get, but I’d say the fact that people have to actively seek them is a big problem to growth.

    With these services, despite how good they are, you use what your friends use. Its really hard to get your friends to use a service that you yourself had trouble getting into, or to which you have to find invites for.

    So if your friends aren’t using the site, you have less incentive to come back, hence the decline in numbers as time goes on.

  56. Aaronontheweb

    December 21st, 2007 at 3:54 pm

    Duncan Riley, the court jester of Techcrunch, has the audacity to claim that Persai will fail based off some leaked beta UI screen shots? Why in the fuck does Mike Arrington let people like you write?

  57. rick

    December 21st, 2007 at 4:05 pm

    Given all indicators of Duncan Riley’s ability to judge a company’s potential for success, I’d say his anti-endorsement of Persai is a good thing. That’s assuming that his being a dumbass is symmetric under reflection *fingers crossed*

  58. Mark

    December 22nd, 2007 at 5:53 am

    @56 Jaiku only went closed when Google bought them; prior to that they were (I believe) open.

  59. Joost

    December 23rd, 2007 at 2:05 pm

    Who cares about Alexa anyway? Alexa is just a terrible indicator of anything.

  60. Gregory Pittman

    December 24th, 2007 at 7:25 am

    Do these stats count just the number of people visiting the websites of Twitter and Pownce? If so, then they’re skewed. Because most people use third party apps to use Twitter rather than visiting the Twitter website. But the Pownce downloadable app is so bad that I’m sure very few actively use it.

  61. Ree Tanjuatco

    December 26th, 2007 at 7:12 pm

    I wonder who will report it when TC is nearing the deadpool LoLz

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