Pownce, the media-rich Twitter competitor once labeled by the New York Times as “the hottest startup in Silicon Valley”, is headed to the deadpool after being acquired by Six Apart. The service, which was co-founded by Digg’s Kevin Rose along with Leah Culver and Daniel Burka, will be closing its doors on December 15. Users will be able to export their accounts to other services, allowing them to retain their messages and media, but it looks like Pownce users will have to turn to Twitter for their micro-blogging needs (if they haven’t already). Culver and Mike Malone (Pownce’s two engineers) will be integrated into the Six Apart team.
The news doesn’t come as much of a surprise – Pownce has long struggled in the shadow of Twitter in the microblogging space, despite the fact that the Pownce crew objects to being called a Twitter competitor. There were some major differences: Pownce allowed users to share photos, music, videos, events and offered niceties like an official AIR application, but its core functionality was still very similar.
We first heard about the site back in summer 2007, when it made it headlines as Rose’s secret new startup. Excitement built up to the point that invites were being sold on eBay, but by the end of the year it became clear that Pownce wasn’t catching on nearly as quickly as Twitter, and it seemed like it might be headed to the deadpool before it even launched to the public in January. Even Robert Scoble, who usually embraces social web services, hasn’t updated his account since July.
Co-founder Leah Culver has written a semi-sweet farewell to the Pownce community on the site’s blog.
Thank. God.
Yeah, it’s gotta be rough to know that there’s a web service out there you don’t like and impacts your life in no way, huh?
powned
Almost as bad as knowing there’s a guy out there who “adds value” generically in his job description on his crappily styled blog. A recession doesn’t have to be a bad thing, it trims the more disgusting fat like pownce, and I’ll wager if it continues, your goal of “# Pay off a debt I owe a family member” might have to wait a while
First iwantsandy now pownce. Well i’m not so sure i care about pownce but yea its funny.
pownce is the only site where a complete stranger can find out about when someone came back from the supermarket.
I don’t know Leah, and I wish the team well. But what sticks in my head when Pownce was early in development, was Leah asking a really elementary Python question (or discussing something she just learned), and getting “Pownced” on by the Internet community.
A couple of lessons there…
- ask stupid questions anonymously, or
- don’t be famous; The interneters are very helpful to the unfamous, and cruel to the famous.
Also, Leah, don’t listen to the jerks (see above).
I found it. She wrote 11 lines to do what can be done in a fraction of one line: round off a number to the nearest half:
stars = round(star_sum*2/num_raters)/2
http://leahculv...9/star-ratings/
^ Bob, wow. But whatever, I’m sure she’s more than competent. Sometimes the simplest of solutions slip us.
I disagree on the stupid questions thing. What I saw in Leah’s post (which was incredibly stupid, btw) was a lack of self-consciousness and a very mature ability to learn from others without being afraid of being laughed at.
One of the biggest things that holds people back is that they’re afraid of failure in other people’s eyes, so they never try.
@Ryan Waggoner
I agree, if you don’t mind dodging a few tomatoes. She published something which MANY people thought was incredibly stupid, and she took a lot of grief for it. All because she’s a public figure and her post was incredibly stupid, not just a little stupid, in people’s minds. But she learned from it. In general, there’s no such thing as a stupid question… but a public figure will get roasted for it.
On the other hand, if you are on the verge of releasing a product (like she was), and you are a very public figure, and you want your product to be a success, then every comment and blog post needs to be thought of as a potential marketing vehicle.
I’m sure she got SOME attention drawn to Pownce because of that incredible post. Personally, I would have taken a close look at Pownce because of her fame (ok, and her looks!) thinking that she had some of the right ingredients (outside of a product) to increase her likelihood of success – and then I recalled that post and thought… naah I won’t waste my time.
So in my case – sample size=1 – the post worked against the success of Pownce.
I have to admit I had the same problem and used an equally stupid solution.
You can still be a successful programmer and still be mildly retarded at it. Especially for those of us who are self-taught and not particularly brilliant at algebra.
I really doubt anybody gave as much of a shit about that post as you did @Bob.
Using the word “acquired” is a real compliment in this case. “Saved” might be a better term.
That’s what I was about to say – ‘acquired’ for what, $100 and the relief of not being unemployed in this economy?
I’d take it..
Best of luck in the future!
Your SixApart link is broken.
Six Apart link should have the hyphen removed I think…
Best of luck to them.
Any ideas what happened here? Might pownce have been a little ahead of its time, seeing it’s a bit more robust than twitter, but never actually gained substantial market share.
I wouldn’t really call it ahead of it’s time, I tend to think it’s basic problem is it simply replicates a few simple features of the larger / mainstream social networks. No innovation and or fantastic marketing generally results in a lackluster user base. I do wonder the finances of this deal, doesn’t seem like it could be worth too much to anyone.
Critical mass was not attained. Very unfortunate.
The talents of Pownce employees can now be directed are more productive uses.
Best,
David
Pownce was more like a nascent AIM or Yahoo Messenger than Twitter. Either way, the market is crowded and Pownce doesn’t provide any truly unique services.
This is what I thought of when I first tried pownce. It seemed just like gtalk only it posted my conversations on a webpage and emailed all my friends that I had sent them a message. It made no sense to me, especially since all major IM clients have the ability to transfer files for free.
when cloning goes wrong. i am surprise they didnt closed shop much earlier. kevin rose being involved is probably what kept them afloat for so long.
…and what got them saved/acquired.
herbert elwood gilliland III
Wait, Leah Culver was just on the cover of “Inc” magazine and they called Pownce “one of the hottest startups” (more or less).
My faith in technology coverage by print media is dwindling …
Inc doesn’t really get the web. They do better at other tech and general biz coverage.
Inc thought it would help to have pretty girls on their cover?
No offense to Leah’s talents of course…I’m just sayin’
Seems to me what really happened was that Six Apart “acquired” two talented developers / designers.
Pownce users are more than welcome to head on over to Zaplife.com.
lol
Good Luck!
Thanks
Is that like Lavalife?
What is Lavalife?
Zaplife is something new that combines blogging with community.
It was only a matter of time..
Farewell.
Best of luck to Leah and Mike, they have some real talents and great ideas…should work out well for Six Apart.
I concur. The Pownce team is extremely talented and they’ll succeed in the long term. It’s a shame to see the service go.
“Ideas are a dime a dozen” and “Execution is everything” doesn’t seem to be much in play for this. Let the failures thrive in a new company!
so what happens to their community manager? – there seems to be conflicting reports about ariel
who?
Given the limits of my psychic bandwidth, I’m glad I’ve stuck with Twitter and didn’t dive into Pownce. I have students ask whether they need to become familiar with every new tool that’s developed, and I counsel them that it’s OK to wait and see whether a tool develops a significant community. Pownce obviously never did.
Thank God you’re there for them.
#2
Thank God you’re there for them.
I always thought Pounce was like a walled version of Tumblr with less options for customization.
Yeah, I even wondered why they didn’t add Tumblr in the Google Trends graph. It would have made more sense to me.
Glad I gave Leah the cover of my magazine now.
The bubble gum done bursted. She didn’t go to MIT anyways.
The first of many Web 2.0 companies..
Let the Deadpooling begin..
Great move on both sides. Kevin joining as an adviser as well…
win/win/win/win (4th win is for the bloggers)
Congrats to everyone!!
ummm win/lose/lose/lose/lose/lose/lose….
Win = bunch of web2.0 techies
Lose = hundreds of folks who trusted pownce not to Pounce a deadpool shutdown with such short notice.
blame it on inevitable evolution, internet efficiency or internet integration …….aka web 3.0. appears that we may only have one or two major player in the microblogging arena. maybe other startups in this genre could learn something from this.
I honestly thought that Pownce would do better than this. Its a pity that it got bought by Six Apart.
Well…what to say….Kevin you cannot make a “digg” out of everything.
http://www.livbit.com
what’s pownce?
Meh. I was indifferent about the service anyway. I’m not going to jump on the bandwagon of a product simply because it’s backed by an “Internet celebrity” such as Kevin Rose. Transferring files between users isn’t exactly a revolutionary find.
I read all the articles, but never went on Pownce. I think it was the fact that I could only alert my friends every hour on Twitter and Facebook. Only so much productivity loss one can sustain in a day.
The traffic chart says it all really. Twitter is getting some serious network effects and Pownce’s extra featureset and Digg affiliation wasn’t enough to compete. It was worth a punt, but no point carrying on and 6A will benefit from the new ideas & fresh faces. Best of luck to Leah & Mike.
Well put, but you missed to things about twitter:
1) SMS
2) gradual engagement
Actually, it was very well designed product from a user perspective with many features Twitter still lacks: media support (i.e. you could host MP3s), translation of youtube/flickr URLs into actual embeds, and threaded comments.
Why would they shut it down? Seems to me like something your could make a second run at.
This is a big anniversary for me as a TechCrunch reader. I had just begun reading TC when Pownce launched, and I’m still a reader, yet Pownce is no more. Didn’t seem that long ago.
It’s the simplicity of Twitter that has won over pownce. Pownce was every Twitter was + more features, but was not as simple to use as twitter. Along with that, the community and services that were built over Twitter are enormous compared to Pownce.
Wondering, when will Jaiku die?
The fate of Pownce Vs. Twitter really shows you how all-important network effects are. People use Twitter because everyone else does. Opposite was true for Pownce. The technology almost doesn’t matter. Look at all the fail whales people put up with on Twitter.
Was this just a case of first-mover advantage or something else?
Twitter is very good at one thing and has remain narrowly focused on enhancing that particular feature. IMO, Pownce was “too heavy” and didn’t clearly articulate a key value proposition that would 1) convince a persons connections to join and 2) make them return.
This should fit in perfectly with Six Apart’s other failing products! Bravo!
No one should view this as a Twitter victory. Twitter hasn’t won anything. It’s operating deep in the red with an unproven business model, like most of the companies that failed during the first bubble burst. You don’t win until you turn profit.
Twitter is simple and light. Pownce was always too heavy and “messy”. The AIR app was a pretty horrible experience, no decent mobile tools to post when the moment struck (eg TinyTwitter for that other service).
All the hooha about embedding stuff… what, like adding a TinyURL to a tweet and avoid duplicting the bytes
I’m keen to see what these guys come up with now they don’t have to worry about maintaining Pownce (and I hated that name!) and can apply the lessons they picked up to a fresh slate…
Good. It’s about time somebody pulled the plug on that retardfest. Culver whoring herself up all over the internet, her gaggle of slobbering idiot followers was getting really old! If I never see her name or fugly face in another story it will be too soon.
pardon my french… but what the f^*k did 6A did?
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. “acquiring” a company because the “”value”" 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? it’s not that the market is super hot and they would have a job the next day…
again, all this is very disappointing (note that i am not saying “surprising”), and shows once more that there is a small group of “cool” people running great part of the bay area’s internet…
Umm.. I didn’t read anywhere that 6A actually bought Pownce. All I read was…
“hey we’re shutting down in 2 weeks, and its nice knowing all of ya! See y’all at 6A!”
from the article (on this page) “is headed to the deadpool after being acquired by Six Apart.” Acquired can be used as synonym for “bought”, right?
still no answer to my questions…
Well Leah’s blog didn’t say acquired or bought… maybe she’s too ashamed of it to suggest something like that deserved to be bought. LOL
Acquired can mean, “paid our final electric bill”. It does imply there was any significant money involved (or any money at all for that matter).
The layoffs were almost certainly the bottom performers at six apart, none of them were on a magazine cover recently. The economy provided convenient cover to get rid of underperforming employees. Two totally separate issues
garth, the 6A executive team cut their salaries by something like 10% together with the layoffs… would that make you think they are underperformers as well?
i get your point 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 them), 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 waldmann…
maybe they need new underperforming employees for the next round of “layoffs”?
They still have jobs, 10% is to try and keep morale up and for PR.
Every time I have worked somewhere when they needed to cut costs managers went in proportion to regular employees, once more managers went since they were quite a bit more expensive (and actually hampered productivity it turned out)
I don’t really know much of any of the people involved beyond reading a few articles online and I certainly can’t make a judgment of their work capabilities based on that, but when was the last time you were on the cover of a business publication or written about on techcrunch?
it was the name. It’s sad but true. twitter just sounds better than pownce plus twitter was crazy simple.
I think Pownce was supperior to Twitter by far but Like Eric said, everybody is on Twitter…
They got off to a bad start with that programming faux-pas – all the valley girls were like “ewww! do i really wanna like, use some saas webservice where the programmers cant even round? That’s soooo uncool becky.”
Darn, we just setup our Pownce profile couple of days ago. I want my 15 minutes back!
Wow, who would have ever saw that coming. I am shocked!
jes
http://www.privacy.de.tc
The real question here, boys, is who is going to pownce on Leah Culver. She’s a fox!
we want numbers of the sale !
Who knows what 6A got out of the deal. So far, their acquisitions have made a lot of sense, like when they bought out Appnel Solutions and integrated them into their services group. I would be surprised if they actually paid any real money for Pownce since it was going tits up and the good developers were no doubt already looking for a good new job. For all we know, they could have paid $10K for the rights to all of Pownce.
How does it feel
To be without a home
Like a complete unknown
Like a rolling stone?
@Mike T, they acquired Apperceptive in NYC, not Appnel.
The name is silly, and there are too many social sites already. Only a matter of time for this one.
Not surprising. Everybody that I know who tried Pownce couldn’t figure out what in the world they were supposed to do with it and how the random collection of features made sense. It looked cool, tried to like it, but not real value was presented and nothing that got me hooked to explore and do more.
Didn’t they at least have a revenue model (pro accounts), unlike Twitter?
pownce was a great site and designed well. used it a lot and liked it. won’t be using six apart though. not a fan of the interface. hope leah and kevin sold it for a profit and they’ll be token advisors for a while until the next thing pops up.
assume the sales figures are NDA’d though
Like I was discussing with a professor of mine, Silicon valley right now is filled with people who were too slow to get in on the adjustable rate mortgage scam or the first consumer internet scam. Unfortunately, they’re finding out that the web 2.0 scam is being called as well. A few of these monstrosities squeezed through the m & a door before it closed, but it appears to be locking up tight for a long, long, long time, and it’s gonna be pretty swell to watch all these “superstars” either pack up and head home or be too late for the next bubble all over again.
That’s the beauty of it, there are always bubbles for people who really are superstars, but chances are they’ll be gone with the money before you even heard of the game, while people like Kevin Rose, Leah Culver, Lodwick, etc. will be perennially late.
Pownce was not unique enough to succeed. It served no new function. That was obvious from the start I thought. At least they tried.
If the amount was big they would not have any qualms disclosing it.
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