A couple dozen Pownce users logged in to their favorite service yesterday to behold a message no social media devotee can bear to read: “Pownce will be shutting down on Dec 15, 2008,” highlighted in bright gold. As Lead Developer Leah Culver writes on the Pownce Community Blog,
We have some very big news today at Pownce. We will be closing the service and Mike and I, along with the Pownce technology, have joined Six Apart, the company behind such great blogging software as Movable Type, TypePad and Vox. We’re bittersweet about shutting down the service but we believe we’ll come back with something much better in 2009. We love the Pownce community and we will miss you all.
Needless to say, despite this good news for Leah, Mike Malone, and others (read the Inquisitr for commentary on the business end of things), it’s a shame to see the service go. I myself am a so-called “Featured User” on the site and have spent many hours meeting and interacting with over 1,000 friends and followers– 1,000 connections which will vanish in just two weeks.
As with any bittersweet news, though, there are always lessons to be learned. When news like this strikes a dedicated community, it’s worth considering a few basic questions.
What went wrong?
Something went wrong, that much is obvious, as evidenced by Jason Calacanis’ brusque image post. Where “competing” microblogging service Twitter took off between January and August 2007, Pownce never gained the critical momentum it took to gain the appropriate popularity. (I myself joined the service in July.)
What led to this plateau, though? Here are a few thoughts.
- A failure to distinguish itself. Pownce was largely different from its competitors; anyone who followed the site knew that. The developers, though, didn’t capitalize on these distinctions, despite the fact that they could have easily.
- A split identity. Nobody ever quite knew what Pownce was. Many users took advantage of its solid media-sharing capabilities to, as suggested by the site’s tagline, “share stuff with their friends.” Other users used the service more as a personal microblogging platform of sorts. Both sorts of users occasionally found friction in their different visions of what Pownce was.
- No push by the big names behind the site. Founder and web icon Kevin Rose was in a large part responsible for the site’s initial success, as noted by CenterNetwork’s Allen Stern. However, when the site needed his influence the most, he bailed, openly calling for Twitter, not Pownce, followers on his Diggnation podcast.
- A lack of innovation. Pownce has basically remained the same service since its inception. Compare this to FriendFeed, for instance, which has had 10 times as many new developments and feature additions in a quarter of the time.
Despite these failures, though, a core group on Pownce continued to thrive, and I’ll be the first to admit it was pleasant having a semi-anonymous, simple forum to which I could turn at any hour of any day for advice, humor, or company.
What happens now?
Like mirror suddenly struck by a hammer, the Pownce community has instantly fragmented into a dozen different directions. Many users have come to rely on the connections they’ve made thanks to the service; nobody knows quite what to do as well-known names urge the disillusioned group towards Twitter, Ning, or homebrewed temporary alternatives.
The largest segment of the Pownce population has tentatively headed toward Vox, a lightweight SixApart blogging tool released quite some time ago, but initial reactions are negative. There are too many buttons, too many features; it’s not nearly as streamlined as the simple Pownce system was. As a I remarked within the Pownce community last night, the whole SixApart experience is all very “I’m a PC.” Social media requires a simplicity and ease of use to function, and Vox (and even TypePad) has neither.
As far as I’m concerned, I’m pleased that I’ll have one fewer social media site to keep up with over the coming months. However, I wish it hadn’t been Pownce to go.
What are your thoughts? If you’re a Pownce user, how are you handling the situation? Are the connections you’ve made through the site truly important? Convince me.
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I’m mostly just shocked and disapointed. A lot of users are on Friendfeed and Twitter until a new service comes along that will replace Pownce.
It’s understandable, though, as long as it wasn’t going anywhere. I’m looking forward to this “new thing coming out in 2009″ and hope we’re able to leverage some manner of influence to get invites as soon as they’re out!
A lot of us considered the Pownce community to be its strongest asset. As such we served as marketers, evangelists, tech support and beta testers - it would have been nice to have in the spirit of the community to have been included in discussions regarding the future of the site.
I’m just sad…
That is a good point, Nick, especially as people like Leah were doing more for the site (visibly, at least) than the developers were! We were shareholders, in a sense, and it would have been nice to be presented with anything but a firm decision.
Me too, Bastien, this is how I met a bunch of interesting people, you included!
I’ll tell you if I start doing something which looks like Pownce guys
I know it’s not the same offer, but maybe try HyperWeek.com
It’s still in Alpha and a few things to improve but there is a lot of things to do with !
Good analysis. And sure it’s a shame to see such a community in a “blank” mode.
A very good sum up of Pownce, I think its a great shame it was something different from Twitter.
I kind of went through this already when Pownce was having way too many issues to be usable.
I closed my original account and made stakes in Plurk. Ay first it was not as cool as Pownce, but the people sold me.
Then I cam back after urged by Heather, who later bolted due to some people on Pownce.
Now its closing down altogether. And I am still at Plurk. Its a good alternative. More CSS hackable and not as ugly as Twitter.
I will be there if anyone should need a Spam Subject Line of The Day.
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I’m incredibly saddened by the news. Pownce has the best user interface and is far more robust than Twitter. But as you and others have always said, it was never a direct Twitter competitor, it was a different bird altogether. Foremost of course was the community. We’ve got great people on Pownce and it was very easy to get to know each other there. That’s not so easy on Twitter. I keep fantasizing that Six Apart has plans for a Pownce 2, but by shutting down now they’ll lose the existing customers. I’ve joined Vox, and I’m on FriendFeed, but nothing is quite the same. I also started a Pownce Refugees on Ning as another alternative hang out. I’m also pulling in the Pownce RSS feeds from FF and Vox there. Someone is now building http://www.topixz.com/ as a substitute and I signed up, but who knows where we’ll all go in the end. My fear is we’ll scatter. I tried Plurk before but it just didn’t serve my needs. It drained time but the content wasn’t as solid. Hmmmph. RIP Pownce. We’ll miss you!
folks, please join forces. if you all start building up your own lookalikes, feelalikes, havens and blogs we will soon be scattered all over the virtual planet.
i may be kind of old-fashioned, but where should Pownce have gone? it was great to interact (both UI and people), simple to use, attractive without being flashy.
honestly, what i dislike on the other platforms is these thousands of applications, bells and whistles, all to distract you from the vis-a-vis and their message.
yes, it wasn’t robust enough. okay, one or two add-ons maybe (but what?) mightn’t hurt much. but still. for me it was great as it was.