Sparked by the recent TechCrunch post about the downward spiral of Pownce, (which itself was inspired by this Uncov piece), I thought I’d throw in my two cents on the issue.
I’ll start right off by saying that I don’t necessarily think a comparison to Twitter is completely valid, but then again, that’s probably part of Pownce’s problem. I don’t use Twitter, but it’s widely regarded as being an excellent tool for what it does, and a large piece of that value is its strict adherence to a model of simplicity.
If their intention was to compete with Twitter (which it seems to have been), they had a hard task ahead of them. They could either do the same thing (very limited functionality, done well) and just do it better (which they probably figured they couldn’t win at, and were probably correct) or go the route of adding more features on top and hoping to woo people over that way.
The problem with the latter approach is that they turned it into essentially a blogging tool with social networking features. I’m sure someone probably thought this was genius, but they missed the fact that people who want to blog already have excellent tools available to them, and most people currently have their fill of social networking on FaceBook.
In looking at Pownce (before I started using it), I used to think that it might be a good fit for someone who essentially wants to “blog” (posts + comments) but maybe wants an ultra-simple entry point. That part totally falls down, however, when it comes to following conversations, which is a key feature of blogs in my opinion.
Pownce does this very poorly: there is no good way to keep up with comment threads that you’ve either participated in or are interested in. I’ve talked plenty about how much I don’t like this aspect of Pownce before, both here and on Pownce itself, so no need to belabor that point.