Just caught this on TechCrunch via Daniel Burka on Pownce — not sure how it slipped by me! Pownce, the long-compared-to-Twitter micro-blogging tool, comes out of beta tonight. Great news for Daniel, Leah Culver, and Kevin Rose, who’ve worked hard to build a great tool for social aggregation.
I’ve been using Twitter and Pownce for the last six months, on and off, and I’m torn between the two. Which is a whole lot better off than I was before, when I was torn between just how stupid I thought they both were in the first place.
Twitter, Pownce, and legions of tools that have adopted the “Status” function, all appear to address the question, “what are you doing right now?” With Twitter, I didn’t really care at first. The public posts range from invites to meet-ups to updates on bathroom performance, to shots at sports teams, to cries for help.
Then, I ran into some folks on both services who know how to actually use them. Take Alex France, for example, who goes by the Pownce moniker dignews. Alex posts tech news and links with short headlines, and has become one of my favorites to follow, because he seems to share my interests. Alex is 16-years-old, from Manchester, England.
Or how about Thomas Hawk, president of photo-sharing site Zooomr, who is using Pownce as part of his photographic jihad to share a half a million finish, corrected images with the world. Every day I’m greeted with a handful of gallery-quality photography.
For me, where Pownce takes the hands-down lead is in offering the ability to group my friends into sets. Close friends? Co-workers? Each can have their own group, and you can ensure that messages you send to one group don’t clutter up the inboxes of others, who might find the message inappropriate.
Look at it this way: I set up a new “Clients” group. I can use the tool to send quick status updates to my clients who might need to know timely information about our work together. In a recent software launch, the client group served as a key lynchpin in delivering timely information to the people who needed to know it. And that, after all, is the key to employing a tool that actually fits the job.
This is the biggest hurdle, still, and I hope the Pownce launch drums up enough mainstreamish press to get the message out: these social aggregator/micro-blog services aren’t just for tweeners and programmers — there’s a business use, too. Finding the sweet spot where tool and utility intersect will help us all be more productive, and efficient.
If you use either tool, find me here on Twitter, and here on Pownce. And don’t forget to find me here on Facebook, and here on LinkedIn, too!