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 he wrote about it a bit on his tumblr blog. The founding team of the company also includes Leah Culver, Daniel Burka, and Shawn Allen.
Pownce looks to be a web based sharing network with an optional desktop client (built on Adobe Air) for advanced features. Without having had the opportunity to test it, it looks to be overlapping with AllPeers and Pando, and possibly others. It also clearly has basic social networking features – see Rose’s profile page for the service here.
Right now, there are four basic things you can send: messages, links, files, and events.
You might send an event out to a dozen of your friends letting them know you’re hosting a party this Friday. They could easily get the event details you entered, respond with questions or comments and then quickly rsvp.
Say you had a great photo you wanted to share with all of your friends. Just add the file and all of your friends will get it right away. They’ll be able to reply and tell you if it’s cool. You could even post songs you recorded in your home studio to share with your friends.
It’s in private beta currently, but you can request an invitation on the home page.
Kevin’s been on a bit of a roll lately. Digg continues to grow, and his other startup, Revision3, just raised another round of financing.