Since Yesterday I have been able to have a quick review at Pownce (thank you Robert G.). Pownce literally has web2.0 written over it in all the bad ways: it has a weird name, it’s in Beta (or is it Alpha?), uses pastel colored themes, allows you to share stuff with your friends, is invite only, and is generally useless. Honestly, I love web2.0 technology but these guys are really pushing the hype.

As if things couldn’t get worse, they actually managed to ignore all the issues I discussed recently with Reinier: they are monetizing it even from this Alpha/Beta status, they offer something that (honestly) we don’t need, they are not really specific as you can share anything with anyone without really differentiating from let’s say an email, and it is clearly not viral. The last point might not be clear, but if you think about the fact that you almost never want to share random files with people then it makes sense. If you want to share specific things like photos or videos, you go to a site like Flickr or YouTube.

As Kevin Rose (guy behind Digg) is involved in this startup they are getting a lot of hype, but I think that’s sad as it takes focus away from the truly cool startups. In the end they did some stuff right though, as Pownce allows you to group friends and send files to individuals and groups. Additionally they launched a nice desktop application for Windows and Mac to share and get updates. Their tool uses Adobe AIR and has one problem though as SmudgyPixel noted yesterday:

All and all I think Pownce is a rubbish product in its current state, and I am already becoming pretty annoyed with all those “friends” of mine sending me “test” messages.

This entry was posted on Monday, July 2nd, 2007 at 14:34 and is filed under review, trust, webapplication.