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 on its TypePad and TypePad Motion products. Culver writes that her next project is developing an iPhone application for Plancast.
Despite reports to the contrary, Culver isn’t joining Plancast full time (at least not yet). Plancast founder (and TechCrunch alum) Mark Hendrickson says that she’s joining on a contract basis to build the iPhone app, but that the long-term future is uncertain. Culver’s blog notes that she might continue working on Leafy Chat, a web based IRC client that’s in private beta. → 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 peer-to-peer hacker best known for his work on Mojo Nation, a precursor to BitTorrent. And Mike Malone, an engineer at Six Apart who was also instrumental in the building of Pownce, the since-deadpooled social messaging service. → 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 used Tumblr or Posterous in the past. I hate the term “micro-blogging,” but that’s essentially what this is in the eyes of some people. That is to say, it’s a platform that makes it easy to quickly post items you find that you enjoy from around the web. You can certainly use it to write more traditional blog posts if you want, but the clear emphasis is on sharing links, photos, music, and other quick-share items from around the web. → 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 Motion – the first application to launch on the new platform – as the phoenix rising from the ashes of Pownce (which the company picked up late last year).
This is an interesting move for a number of reasons. Let’s tackle TypePad Platform first and take a look at Six Apart’s forray into the community microblogging space afterwards. → 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 manager position at Nokia in 2006 to co-found one of the first micro-publishing services, Jaiku.
Engeström talks about what he’s currently involved with at Google and what the further plans with the Jaiku technology are. → 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 to retain their messages and media, but it looks like Pownce users will have to turn to Twitter for their micro-blogging needs (if they haven’t already). Culver and Mike Malone (Pownce’s two engineers) will be integrated into the Six Apart team.
The news doesn’t come as much of a surprise – Pownce has long struggled in the shadow of Twitter in the microblogging space, despite the fact that the Pownce crew objects to being called a Twitter competitor. There were some major differences: Pownce allowed users to share photos, music, videos, events and offered niceties like an official AIR application, but its core functionality was still very similar. → 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 aimed squarely at your target demographic. Our only improvement? If the iPhone had been controlled by a man in a Boba Fett costume and the woman in the video had been dressed like Leia in the Jabba’s lair I think the true awesometude would have blown this video off the charts. → 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 itself. (See screenshots).
In addition to Craigslist, iList faces competition from Facebook, which runs its own Marketplace app, and other classifieds apps on Facebook such as ShopIt. But iList gets a lot right that other social classifieds don’t. → 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 allowing users to post files to the general public, not just their Pownce friends. The micro-blogging format, however, only allows one file to be posted at a time, although these individual files can be played back in a simple Flash player. This new player might allow users to upload batches of audio files and share them with friends as mixtapes, which would put the service in competition with sites like Muxtape, Mixwit, Mixaloo, and Imeem. Seen more broadly and in light of recent lifts in file size limits, this could be a sign that Pownce is trying to differentiate itself from Twitter by heading further in the file sharing direction, as suggested by Duncan Riley just the other day. It seems as though Pownce’s already-vague “send stuff to your friends” tagline isn’t broad enough after all. Thanks Ryan for the tip. CrunchBase Information Pownce Information provided by CrunchBase → 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), and upload and download files. OAuth support will also be rolled out, allowing users to protect their Pownce data when using API-based services. Services built on the API will be publishable in a Pownce directory where users can find them more easily. Culver says that API 2.0 is powerful enough that developers could recreate the official Pownce AIR client if they were so inclined. Pownce is already speaking with several partners who have shown an interest in using the new API, including Flock who plans to integrate Pownce into its people sidebar so you can see friends’ messages and post messages while browsing. SocialThing! and Mahalo also plan to use Pownce’s new API. SocialThing!, a social activity aggregator launching this March, will feature the ability to send messages to friends on Pownce in addition to other sites such as Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, del.icio.us, and YouTube. Mahalo currently relies on a hack to allow website sharing to Pownce through its Share Firefox toolbar; access to this new API will replace that hack. Culver will be at FOWA Miami this Friday to officially launch the new API. She’ll be speaking there about websites as services and the importance of solid APIs. CrunchBase Information Pownce Information provided by CrunchBase → 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 messages to Twitter and Facebook too, though, which is useful. My Twitxr account is here. Here’s an example of a message that was copied over to Twitter. Another feature I like is the fact that you tell it where you are, so location information is included. Varsavsky says it’s specially designed for the iPhone, and they’ve created software that makes uploading text and a photo from the iPhone very easy. As a third party application, though, it isn’t officially available for the iPhone. You have to “jailbreak” the phone before you can install their application. It looks like you can’t simply grab a photo that you’ve taken normally from the iPhone, either. You have to initiate the photo through the Twitxr application. The application automatically adds location information to your photos and updates. Twitxr is the upteenth variation of Twitter to appear (see Jaiku (acquired by Google), Pownce, etc. One clone has even gone to the deadpool. This isn’t even the first Twitter-variation to include photos – see Zannel . This is something Dave Winer has been working on with his FlickrtoTwitter project as well – which sends links of your new Flickr photos to your Twitter account. And photoblogging is nothing new. So as pretty as Twitxr is, perhaps FON should stick to wifi. Update: I’m actually going to re-jailbreak my iphone to test the software – the fact that uploading is so easy and it adds location information is worth noting. If it works really well, this could actually be a reason for me to stop posting directly to Twitter. CrunchBase Information Twitter Fon Twitxr Martin Varsavsky Information provided by CrunchBase → 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 Twitter, they are offering the template on an open source basis and that if people want to hack it for this purpose, “you’re welcome to.” The concept of a distributed Twitter has been discussed in certain circles for the better part of the last year. The concept is to decentralize a short message service, therefore overcoming the constant issues Twitter has with service provision, or in simple terms, many people host the service across many servers, and they all talk to one and other. Allen Stern at Centernetworks says that “With WordPress the dominant player in blogging, this could be a game changer.” Nah. It’s a reasonable enough idea, but the key to Twitter’s success has been three fold. One is its sheer volume of users that has seen it defeat competitors such as Jaiku by providing the most active and rich user base. Secondly although the centralized service is a weakness, it’s also a strength because when you connect to others on Twitter, you connect to others on Twitter. No working out whether the server they’re on is up-to-date, live or even compatible, it just works (when it’s not down, or “temporarily overloaded”). Third is the open access to Twitter via third party tools; just ask Leah Culver from Pownce (who’s not one of my fans) about why open access is vital in building something like this. Prologue may provide some open access, but its distributed nature will mean that ultimately it will be a niche product; possibly a good niche product, but it’s not going to knock the Twitter bird off its perch any time soon. CrunchBase Information Automattic Pownce Jaiku Twitter Information provided by CrunchBase → 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 sole developer, Culver, could maintain site performance. The site is still run with Culver as the only full time employee. A number of new features are also being added to the service. A new version of their desktop client has is part of the release (version 3), built on the Adobe Air platform. The new version also allows users to directly respond to messages from friends. Previously users had to go to the websites to respond, making conversations more difficult. Burka says this feature allows users to “respond freakishly fast.” Users can now bypass the tedious process of adding new friends to yet-another-social-network. The new version allows users to import friend lists from any/all of Digg, Flickr, Twitter or Facebook. More services will be added regularly, Culver says. A big part of Pownce is event invitations, although previously users could only view events via a mini-list embedded in the right sidebar of the site. Events are now also broken out into their own page, with public views as well as lists of a user’s events that they are holding or attending. They can then be downloaded into Google Calendar of iCal format. See last screen shot below. The most interesting new feature is a group of lists that highlight interesting users. This isn’t just a list of top users by number of friends or number of posts, but a more editorialized list of people who might be interesting to follow. These are called “Featured Powncers” – you can see how they are highlighted in the top screen shot. Pownce isn’t a Twitter clone, as Culver says repeatedly. To me it’s more of a Twitter “plus” (see our now-dated comparison from last July), since it incorporates file sharing and event invitations as well as simple messages. Pownce also skipped the mobile integration that Twitter is focused on. So they clearly aren’t a clone – but the real question is whether users will be likely to choose just one, or use both. → 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 probably only room for one Twitter in this world, and Twitter itself seems determined to hang in there. Pownce, previously a one-person shop (developer Leah Culver), has started to hire people and is looking for office space. We’ve also heard Culver doesn’t like Pownce being called a Twitter-clone. But the shoe fits quite nicely in this case, and the clone moniker stands. Sure, there are differences. But it isn’t different enough. → 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 have abandoned the platform, Alexa showing a remarkable 80% drop in traffic. The Pownce AIR client was buggy at launch and the lack of an open API has meant that whilst Twitter continues to grow with the assistance of an ever increasing range of third party apps, Pownce has actually gone backwards. Culver and Rose will be hoping that the interest in Pownce hasn’t declined to a state where 3rd party developers will not be interested in building for Pownce: it’s really the only thing the platform might have left to arrest its continued slide of user interest. CrunchBase Information Pownce Information provided by CrunchBase → 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 service like Twitter. Today Yappd announced that it was being acquired and the service will be shut down on November 5. Welcome to the TechCrunch Deadpool, Yappd. We hardly knew you. That leaves Twitter, Pownce and the recently acquired (by Google) Jaiku left in the ring. → 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 engineers are excited to be working together and enthusiastic developers lead to great innovation. We look forward to accomplishing great things together. In order to focus on innovation instead of scaling, we have decided to close new user sign-ups for now. But fear not, all our Jaiku services will stay running the way you are used to and you will be able to invite your friends to Jaiku.” The terms of the acquisition have not been released. This is a fascinating move by Google which would have looked at Twitter prior to this acquisition, and Twitter’s recent $5 million series A funding last July. There will be inevitable comparison’s with Google’s acquisition of Dodgeball, which largely came to nothing, but it would appear that the time for social networking and blogging via mobile has come. Google’s ability to add scale and marketing muscle to Jaiku should be putting Twitter on the back-foot right now. More coverage on TechCrunch UK. → 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 up with the Pownce gender list, I’m somewhat miffed that Digg copied Pownce. Culver also linked to an image on Flickr which she subsequently deleted. The first and most obvious question: has there been a complete break down in communications and trust between Pownce’s founders that they now find it necessary to air their dirty laundry (ironically) on Digg? Second: why did Culver delete the picture after posting the link on Digg? Was pressure brought to bare? As much as we all admire Kevin Rose’s tenacity and creativity, there is always a point where you can be wearing too many hats. Rose has three (Digg, Rev3, Pownce), which I’m guessing is at least one too many, possibly two. → 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. The news has met with mixed reactions by Digg users, with some suggesting a name change to “Diggspace” may be coming. The group story sharing feature was noted with this comment: The best part is that if you decide to use any of these new features and spread stories you’re into around to all your friends, you’ll get banned for gaming the system. Great idea! Notably, the new link sharing features put Digg into competition with Kevin Rose’s other startup: Pownce. It will be interesting to see how Digg builds the features out given the obvious conflict building between the two. Update: Kevin Rose has now posted to the Digg blog with the changes, demo video as below Rose also said that Digg was moving towards offering new features in the future including: * Digg Images: A dedicated images section (with thumbnails). Still on track to launch in late October. * Revamped Comments: No more ajax loads, new clean and lightweight design (similar to the old comment system). * Digg Alerts: Alerts will give you the ability to create customized email alerts – when a story becomes popular, summaries of popular stories on specific topics, and when your friends recommend stories. * Story Suggest: Dozens of servers crunch the math to provide you with real-time recommendations (stories and friends) based on what you’ve dugg in the past. → 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 possible for a third party desktop application designer to create a client that utilized these additional features…if only Pownce ever got around to offering an open API; the last we heard of that was July. The minority of people who use microblogging tools directly from a web page should enjoy the new features. → Read More
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