It can be fun to Pownce on a friend

From the beginning of the web when it was just a collection of self hosted bulletin boards, there has always been a desire among users to share messages, exchange ideas and forward interesting information about other areas on the web. To meet this desire countless attempts at communication software has been offered by many companies and individuals.

Entering this arena is Pownce which went live back in June of 2007. The brain child of Digg’s Kevin Rose and others, this tool promises to meet all your Instant messaging needs. While Pownce does not show any true innovation in the instant messaging market, it does combine enough features from other instant messaging services to make it quite unique. With Pownce you can now send messages, share links, Transfer files and even schedule event information all in one place. However there are a few issues with Pownce.

First, this program is no good unless you know other people who use it as well. This problem is somewhat mitigated by the fact that Pownce is a by invite program, however getting all of ones friends to start using this program is far from guaranteed.

Second, unlike many other instant message programs Pownce requires not only that you download Pownce but also that you download Adobe AIR. While this is a small download, it is still an extra step that shouldn’t really be required.

Finally, Pownce doesn’t offer anything that is not easily found in other programs, while it does offer a greater degree of diversity in one place, this may not be enough to justify the switch from other popular messaging programs.

In the end Pownce is a fun program and certainly worth exploring. There is lots of room for growth and this program does have exciting potential. However this potential may not be recognized, as Pownce’s main failing is that it really doesn’t offer anything new to the market.