In December 2008, Six Apart acquired Pownce, a microblogging service that never managed to attract a large following. Pownce was shuttered after the acquisition, but its two-person team joined Six Apart to help integrate the technology into Six Apart’s blogging services. Today Pownce founder Leah Culver has written on her blog that she’s leaving Six Apart, where she spent the last year working… → Read More
Two weeks ago, SimpleGeo raised a $1.5 million seed round from just about every big angel investor in Silicon Valley. Not surprisingly, they’re already putting that money to good use.
Before the funding, SimpleGeo was a team of four including co-founders Matt Galligan and Joe Stump. As of today, they’re now 7, with the arrival of two new hires: Zooko (yes, that’s what he’s known as), a… → Read More
I don’t recall ever paying for a TypePad blog, but apparently I did. I learned this today when I logged in for the first time in years to see that the site I had set up in 2005 was deactivated because my credit card had expired. Lucky for me, I don’t have to pay anymore because TypePad has finally launched a free version of the service.
TypePad Micro will be very familiar to anyone who has ever… → Read More
Blogging software pioneer Six Apart this morning announced that it’s debuting TypePad Cloud Platform, a new service that enables developers to use the service’s API to build social applications while leaving the storage, infrastructure and organization of the data that is core to such tools to TypePad’s so-called ‘smart cloud’. Synchronously, Six Apart is introducing and open-sourcing TypePad… → Read More
I just finished moderating a panel with Chris Messina and Jyri Engeström about emerging social behavior on the web at the Next09 conference in Hamburg, and I got the chance to speak with both of them separately afterwards and recorded part of the conversations on video. The first one I’m featuring is the short talk I had with Engeström, the Finnish entrepreneur who left his senior product… → Read More
Pownce, the media-rich Twitter competitor once labeled by the New York Times as “the hottest startup in Silicon Valley”, is headed to the deadpool after being acquired by Six Apart. The service, which was co-founded by Digg’s Kevin Rose along with Leah Culver and Daniel Burka, will be closing its doors on December 15. Users will be able to export their accounts to other services, allowing them… → Read More
This video shows an iPhone controlled beer pouring machine that is triggered by the word “Pour” found in a Pownce RSS feed. It does not solve world hunger or cure cancer, but I think the creator’s heart is definitely in the right place. Digg users/Gizmodo take note: this product, made from Legos, run by the iPhone, and designed to pour an entire bottle of beer into a glass is… → Read More
The road to a better Craigslist is littered with the bodies of startups that could never make it past the first few mile markers. But iList, which launched today out of stealth mode, thinks it can defy the odds by making classified listings more social. The service includes a standalone site, but every listing can be cross-posted to Facebook, Twitter, FriendFeed, Pownce, and even Craigslist… → Read More
Daniel Burka, co-founder and head designer for Pownce, has generated some buzz by posting a screenshot teaser of an upcoming release (shown above). From what we can see in the shot – a search box, an upload link, and parts of the words “Artist” and “Playlist” – it appears to be some sort of browser-based music player. Just a couple days ago Pownce started… → Read More
Leah Culver, the lead programmer of Pownce, has informed us that the messaging/social networking service will release a more complete API this Friday, one with substantial improvements over the first version released late last October. This second version will include the ability to post notes and replies, fetch private and friends-only notes (in addition to public messages and user information)… → Read More
FON (better known for building a WiFi community) launched Twitxr today through their FON Labs group. Basically, it’s Twitter but allows picture uploads when sending a message (which makes it particularly useful for camera phones). FON founder Martin Varsavsky announced the product on his blog. So, yeah, basically it’s a photoblog. You can easily set it up to automatically send your… → Read More
Automattic has released Prologue, a Twitter style service for groups that is also being pitched as a distributed Twitter. According to Automattic’s founder Matt Mullenweg, the new service is way for users to share short messages with a corporate structure, or with private messaging between different groups. Mullenweg says that although it’s not initially aimed at becoming a distributed… → Read More
Pownce, a service that lets users send messages, files, links, and events to friends, first launched into private beta over six months ago. It was founded by Leah Culver, Kevin Rose and Daniel Burka (Rose and Burka of Digg fame). Tonight at midnight PST Pownce leaves private beta and anyone can join. There are 150,000 or so users in the service now – users have been waitlisted so that the… → Read More
Uncov has a very funny post on the demise of Kevin-Rose-founded-Twitter-clone Pownce, noting that their traffic seems to have fallen to the point that “Even TechCrunch can’t save you now.” The image above is taken from their post. That may or may not be true, but when you look at Pownce v. Twitter on Compete.com, the difference doesn’t look quite so brutal. Still, there is… → Read More
The Kevin Rose/ Leah Culver Twitter meets file sharing network Pownce has finally launched a public API, 3 months after first announcing that an API was coming. Pownce launched in late June to a surge of interest based around the involvment of the ever-popular Kevin Rose (Digg, Revision3), however the popularity has not lasted. Both Compete and Alexa show big drops in traffic from Pownce as users… → Read More
When Twitter-clone Yappd launched two months ago, we wrote “Here’s a me-too service that won’t last long” and “yet another hopeful young gun enters the space with little to differentiate itself except the addition of a photo to your status messages.” We may not always be right, but this time it was sort of obvious – the world doesn’t need yet another me-too… → Read More
BREAKING NEWS: Jaiku, the Twitter (and Pownce)-like service from Finland, has been bought by Google. Jaiku Founders Jyri Engeström and Petteri Koponen today posted this on their homepage: “While it’s too soon to comment on specific plans, we look forward to working with our new friends at Google over the coming months to expand in ways we hope you’ll find interesting and useful. Our… → Read More
I’ve speculated previously on the growing conflict Kevin Rose has between his roles at Digg and Pownce, and now it would appear that we may finally be on the eve of Rose being forced to decide between the two. Leah Culver, a co-founder of Pownce with Rose has made a bizarre post to Digg suggesting that Digg’s new features were a direct copy of those from Pownce: Since I originally came… → Read More
Digg is to offer new features today that will provide social networking functionality akin to Facebook and MySpace. Digg users will now have full profile pages that allow them to connect to friends and share stories that may other wise not hit the main page of Digg. Digg users will also be able to chat with one and other, and leave messages on user profiles; a similar feature to the Facebook wall. → Read More
Kevin Rose’s microblogging startup Pownce has announced a number of new user focused features. New features include incoming event notifications, inline video playback, the ability to display social networking links and new preference settings. Notably though, the additional features are focused on those interacting with Pownce via the web, not the Pownce AIR client. Of course it would be… → Read More
TwitKu is a new site that is sort of a Meebo (web instant messaging) for the Twitter and Jaiku “presence blogging” services. The site brings your Twitter and Jaiku accounts onto one screen and adds a posting interface that allows you to post just to one of the services, or to both. The benefit for many people that use both services religiously is obvious. Very simple and very useful… → Read More
Here’s a me-too service that won’t last long. Yappd, a Twitter clone, launched today. In their email to us they describe themselves as “Twitter with picture messaging,” and that pretty much sums it up. It is a service that allows you to quickly tell the world what you are up to. You can add content via their website, email or sms. So while we debate whether Kevin… → Read More
Pownce has announced the launch of a group that will work towards the implementation of a public Pownce API. As Pownce puts it so well on their blog “the lack of an API has been a major criticism levelled against Pownce from day one.” Desktop interaction is Pownce’s Achilles heal; the Pownce Desktop AIR client has been defective from day one. An open API will allow third party… → Read More
Proving that everything has a market, invites to Kevin Rose’s P2P service Pownce are up for sale on eBay. Bidding on Pownce invites start at 1c with buy it now prices at $5. It wasn’t that long ago when Gmail invites were available for sale on eBay, although I’d suggest there is a world of difference between the wildly innovative email platform (at the time) and a P2P platform… → Read More
So I’ve had a week now to play around with Pownce, Kevin Rose’s (the founder of Digg, pictured left) newly launched Twitter killer. Twitter, which launched a year ago, was obviously used as the initial inspiration for the Pownce. They both allow users to sign up, add friends, and broadcast quick notes to people. The main differences: Twitter is mobile-ready, allowing users to receive… → Read More
There have been rumors that Digg’s Kevin Rose has been working on a new startup for some time, but he wasn’t talking. I spent a good amount of time this last weekend at FOO Camp trying to get some of the details out of him, but all he would say is that he’d be contacting us soon. Today he’s made a bit of a public announcement about the project. It’s called Pownce, and… → Read More
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