Twitter vs Pownce – Which Microblogging Platform is Right for You?

Here’s the video, some notes, and some links from my recent talk about Twitter vs Pownce on the Lab with Leo TV show. I *really* shoulda included a review of Jaiku in my comparison. D’oh. *smacks head*

Twitter – multiplatform messaging system

founded by Evan Williams of Blogger and Odeo
-microblogging – super short, one thought, limited to one hundred forty characters

pros
-mobile ready – good for mobile. can use via sms. also works via instant messenger and skype
-everything gets a publicly available permalink – ie google can index it – and twitter has high page rank

cons
-one forty characters can be limiting tough to express complex thoughts
-good for sharing locations and ideas. not as good for sharing structered data like links and file and stuff
-only options are direct messages or public messages
-tough to find friends
-some spammers have already joined
-twitter goes down a lot

Pownce – multipurpose sharing system

launched by Kevin Rose, Daniel Burka, and Leah Culver

-similar to twitter but in addition to short blocks of text, you can also use it to send links, events, and files to friends

pros
-groups – sort your friends or contacts – can send direct, to a group, to all friends, to public
-threaded comments and responses to your post
-i’ve found lots of great music shared from friends on pownce
-nicer interface than twitter
-spam reporting built in

cons
-easy to ‘drown in the flow’
-lots of updates, haven’t found a great way to keep up with it all
-tough to find friends

Links:

http://pownce.com
http://twitter.com

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Twitter
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pownce

http://www.teradome.com/posts/pownce-vs-twitter
http://www.techcrunch.com/2007/07/01/kevin-v-evan/


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4 thoughts on “Twitter vs Pownce – Which Microblogging Platform is Right for You?”

  1. I’d recommend also trying Jaiku, which works very well for my purposes to inform of my “presence”. The company was acquired by Google not too long ago, so I guess they’ve done something right.

  2. Hey, thanks for the link love. 🙂

    I kind of feel like Pownce is losing a little steam, but that is probably just because I am 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, e.g., if I share a .png file, it doesn’t preview the image it the same way as if I shared a link to a Flickr page — even though if I share an .mp3 file, it *will*.

    Stuff like correlate.us and FriendFinder are going to end up eating their audience I think, as will more ambitious efforts to aggregate things like XFN/FOAF and OpenID together into a open social-network system.

    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.

  3. It’s twitter for me.. Coz it’s simpler..if its micro blogging its gotta be simple..If I need to do too many stuffs I’ll just blog…why micro blog?

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