*image via Quantcast

Almost 8 months into its public launch, Pownce is looking like a bit of a lame duck.

Which is strange (or not).

On paper, Pownce seems like a better Twitter than Twitter, given that you can also share files (up to 100 MB in size), as well as embed photos, videos, or MP3’s.  Plus, it handles sharing links in a sleeker way, more dedicated way.  Oh, the mobile interface is kind of nice as well, and when compared against Twitter’s native mobile interface, it doth rocketh a teensiest harder.

What else does it have going for it?  How about a tight pedigree, with Kevin “I’ll Still Be A Dark Tipper After $200M, I swear!” Rose’s mark behind it.

So, why hasn’t it gotten the traction that Twitter has?  It’s been out of private beta since January, but according to public traffic estimates across the board, things have remained kind of flat.  In fact, even with Twitter’s outages, dropping of Twitter followers, and public cries of “I swear, THIS time, I’m dropping it!”, Pownce — or, other micro-messaging services — really haven’t seemed to make a dent into Twitter.

My best guess(es): a combination of first mover advantage plus network effects.  Business history is littered with the examples of lesser products hauling marketing share over products that seem brilliant and better; in this case, Twitter *defined* what micro-messaging services was, captured the imagination of early adopters, exploded at SXSW 2007, and remained challengerless while those early adopters “figured” out how Twitter was useful (Twitter not as a life-streaming service per se, but more of a stateless hive mind, where you can have one-to-many interactions seemlessly).

And by the time they *did*, it was really too late, because far too many people were on Twitter to begin with.  Changing services would be monumental, and convincing others to use it would be a colossal pain in the ass.

Merely *being* better, as in Pownce’s case, can’t be enough.

And having that built in audience is just as surely saving Twitter’s bacon time, after time, after time.

How could services like Pownce (and Plurk, for that matter), grow their audiences?  Its hard to know.  There’s really only one Web 2.0 company that seems to be thriving, in spite of having features that seem to follow the leader: Mixx.

Mixx will never out-digg Digg, but because of industry connections, they’ve been able to convince mainstream media outlets to put their little “Mixx” it button on their sites, creating the impression, anyway, that they’re on equal footing with Digg (and Propeller, for that matter).

Bottom line?

An upward ticking graph that makes everyone happy.  Sure, you’d think the traffic would go through the roof with inbound traffic from the New York Times, CNN and USA Today, but at least its up.

Unlike Pownce.

Coming from the metaphorical lips of Kevin Rose himself, Pownce announced its super-alpha mobile version of Pownce today, available for mobile browsing at mobile.pownce.com.  I think this is an interesting development, given that one of the biggest pluses for Twitter has been the ability to message your crowd “off-line”, enabling all kinds of interesting uses, including the ability to broadcast live updates of events as they happen.  Although a lot of Twitter content *is* of the “my cat’s breath smells like cat food” variety, the ability to engage in your community offline — both as a contributer and a reader — allows for the potential for some very smart and very important real-time information to go back and forth, whether it be a local emergency, weather changes, and so on.

By bringing Pownce “offline”, that is, not being tethered to a machine to do your … em … “powncing”, pownce will also be able to enter the same space as Twitter.

Sort of.

After all, in its current incarnation, Pownce will only be able to be viewed via mobile browser.  While such a site is still available for Twitter, we shouldn’t forget that many people use the SMS function of their phones to Twit away.  I suspect a great deal more people have phones that enabled for SMS than, say web browsing — although early adopters being early adopters, this proportion of folks who are *also* interested in Pownce and Twitter are likely to be much more equal than “normal” folks.

(just like more of them will also own iPhones and use Gmail, I’m sure).

[And following the line as from the above, in an emergency (like a catastrophic emergency), sending messages via SMS may be (this is total conjecture) more efficient and use less data than, say web browsing].

So I’ve had a few days to mull over Pownce.  And you can add my review to the giant stack of reviews you’ve probably read, some of which have been positive and others not so much.  Mine you can add to the “not so much” pile.

So, what is Pownce?

Pownce is an web-based instant messaging system that can be used ex-browser if you download the Adobe Integrated Runtime.  Oh.  Its wrapped up in a pretty slick package, and you can send group messages.   That’s pretty much it.

It shouldn’t be confused with services like Twitter, which are really continuous partial attention services, or something that I’ve described as ambient broadcasting.

The reason is because unlike Twitter, or even the “status” system that’s available through Facebook, there is yet to be an easy way to update your status, or send messages (about your status) through a mobile device.  You can only message when you’re attached to the ‘net through a PC.  This difference cannot be understated because it means that when you’re at an event — literally, an event — you can broadcast information live to your friends.  You can tell them where you are, what you’re doing, what you’re thinking, and where you want to meet.  Twitter, after all, exploded after SXSW, where people were Twittering away about where they were during the festival — and in a peculiar voyeuristic way, you could almost “be” there too if you were observing the tweets.

The other, smaller, difference is that there is no character limit to the messages.  Twitter, for example, has a 140 character limit.  You might not think this is such a big thing (pun not intended), but in fact, limiting the number of characters *forces* you to create terse and important messages.  It also meshes nicely with being able to, in fact, create messages, *anywhere* you are, as mobile Twittering (or now, Twittergramming) is possible.

Both of these limitations make Pownce merely, for the most part, a fancy web based instant messaging system.  And if you think of it that way, its one that’s crippled in one vital respect, in that its not able to integrate with other instant messaging networks.

Sure, it might be so slick it might get you to change your mind about which instant messaging system you might use.  But why should you stick with *one* instant messaging system when you can plug into *all* of them at once?  That way you don’t need to port over your entire network, which is really the killer *anything* of any networked application.

Heck, that’s almost like the *other* fancy web-based instant messaging system that I *already* use.  Maybe you’ve heard of it?  Its called Meebo, and it works pretty damn well.

Now, in all fairness Pownce will probably continue to evolve beyond just being able to doing what it is just doing.  It could add a mobile component, and that would dramatically change things.  It could also add the “plug into all networks” thing, as well.

But will it?  Or will it go in another direction entirely?  Time, as they say, will tell.

So, I finally got on Pownce yesterday, and I need some help testing it out as I have no friends — on Pownce.

Pathetic, isn’t it? :)

Anyway, I have 6 invites to get things going, so I was hoping to start a chain-invite thing going, where I could invite the first few people who leave comments and emails — and then THEY invite the next few and so on ad infinitum.

At any rate its impossible for me to test the thing out without messaging people and flexing its muscles.

If you’re interested, just leave your name and email (although you may want to do it like this –> anthony {dot} hung {at} gmail {dot} com) and we’ll get things going.

… is being propagated by Hugh McLeod, who, once again, has decided to raise the egalitarian “Es Gibt Keine Einliste Es gibt keine A-Liste” (Or, “There is no A-list”, for our non-German reading readers). This issue seems to raise its head every few months, and I am continually flabbergasted that people such as Mr. McLeod continue to deny its very existence.

In this case Mr. McLeod hails that the A-list is over thanks to social networks such as Facebook. He quotes perennial A-lister Robert Scoble,who, in fact, notes that his blogging buddies have noticed a fall in traffic, perhaps *because* of networks such as Facebook.Well, sorry to break it to you guys, but this analysis is pure, unvarnished, horse shit.

Facebook and blogging are related, but very different, mediums.

And in BOTH cases, just as in ALL situations where human beings interact with limited attention spans, there will ALWAYS be folks who command more of it. There will ALWAYS be people at the top of the attention food chain, some in part because they deserve it, and some others because they are undeniably pretty to look at, in others, its the train-wreck phenomenon in that you can’t look away, and in others, because they just got there first.

To deny this fact is to deny reality.

And to think that its any different because there is another sub-medium that is now available for our attention is again — pure, unvarnished, horseshit.

There are going to be people who have more eyeballs looking at them whether its Facebook, MySpace, Twitter, or Pownce. And this inequity will continue to exist even amongst the SAME GROUP OF A-LISTERS, because ironically, many of them are first adopters of different technologies.

Robert Scoble says he’s got a bajillion new friends on Pownce?

Michael Arrington says he’s got a google’s amount of friends on Facebook?

The gross irony is that these are the *same* guys! Do I begrudge them of that? Of course not. But if you want a more facile explanation of A-list, B-list and so on, you can substitute another name for it.

Popularity.

And this is merely a function of them being popular.

Social Networks don’t change that. And in many cases, I suspect, its not a binary or mutually exclusive phenomenon either Just *because* you introduce mediums that ask for your continuous partial attention, such as Twitter or Pownce, OR, walled-in gardens such as Facebook doesn’t mean that you necessarily take away from blogging — which is one of the greatest one-to-many publishing mediums available.

A-lists will always exist because there will always be people who are Popular.

And to deny that it will change because there is a new way for people to share and give attention is pure, unvarnished, horseshit.