Now Reading
Pownce Closes, Team Joins Six Apart

Pownce Closes, Team Joins Six Apart

PownceMicroblogging service Pownce is closing its doors on December 15th, and the team is joining Six Apart, along with the Pownce technology. This from a blog post:

We’re very happy that Six Apart wants to invest in growing the vision that we the founders of Pownce believe so strongly in and we’re very excited to take our vision to all of Six Apart’s products. Mike and I have joined Six Apart as part of their engineering team and we’re looking forward to being a part of the talented group that has created amazing tools for blogging and publishing.

Pro users will get information on what will happen with the money they spent. Maybe they’ll get TypePad accounts or something.

The Pownce team is making an effort so that its users can export their profiles and content, and import it into Vox, TypePad, or WordPress. Vox seems to be Leah Culver’s and Mike Malone’s new home, by the way.

I can’t say that this comes as a surprise. Pownce started out well enough, with a dedicated community and quite some buzz, but it lost momentum, like so many social web sites do. Competing with Twitter isn’t easy, and personally I must say that it got even worse when the popular Adobe Air app Twhirl started supporting Pownce. That meant that people like myself could tweet and pownce on the same time, which meant that there really wasn’t any upside to Pownce. The whole service is really closer to Tumblr, than to Twitter, but it still obviously competes with the same users.

See Also
YouTube features for Content Creators

It’s a shame to see Pownce go, but I’m hoping the team can take some of those nice ideas and put to good use over at Vox, and on other Six Apart products. The Six Apart blog doesn’t give any real information, but the fact that Leah and Mike are moving to Vox might mean something.

Did Pownce ever stand a chance? I think it could’ve carved a decent niche, it just didn’t move fast enough. After all, it did get me to pay for a pro account, and that has to mean something, doesn’t it?

View Comments (4)
  • It’s sad to see Pownce go, I had no problem with it, which probably doesn’t say much. It wasn’t a destination for me. Twitter, FF, FB all are, and Pownce became kind of 2nd thought and an aggregator. Just the other day I was wondering why we needed Pownce when there’s Utterli, which offers audio as well.

  • After all, it did get me to pay for a pro account, and that has to mean something, doesn’t it?

    Yeah, I’ll tell you what it means. It means you’ll be able to get a free one year Typepad account lol.

  • @Michelle McCormack,
    I think that’s the way a lot of people viewed Pownce. Twhirl killed it for me, which is funny since it made it more accessible to updates really.

    @Jeff,
    I see, that’s what they get. Too bad I didn’t renew then…

  • I see Typepad making a comeback in trends from the trackbacks on my blog, can’t qualify it with a reason as to why, but that’s my two cents on it supported by some empirical data.

Scroll To Top