October 25, 2007

Twitter vs Pownce – Which Microblogging Platform is Right for You? - Comments (4)

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/

Posted by kk @ 10:36 am

4 Responses to “Twitter vs Pownce – Which Microblogging Platform is Right for You?”

1. Antti says:

   October 29, 2007 at 4:48 am

   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. Noah Mittman says:

   October 29, 2007 at 8:03 am

   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. sanjukta says:

   November 16, 2007 at 11:36 am

   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?
4. dan says:

   December 8, 2007 at 5:01 am

   twitter is great when you’re on the go. i first heard about it from whitney over at popcandy.