Pownce pwned apart by Six Apart

Alex Zaharov-Reutt
Tuesday, 02 December 2008 16:38

Opinion and Analysis

One of Twitter’s main competitors, Pownce, started off with a lot of hype but inexorably lost out to Twitter’s charms. Now, it’s new owner Six Apart, will shut the service down, promising “great things” in the future and inviting Pownce users to try Six Apart’s Vox service instead.
RIP Pownce, you were the Twitter competitor that just couldn’t make it into Twitter’s league.

As noted on Six Apart’s blog, Pownce was purchased for its team and technology, but the service will close on December 15.

Pownce launched in June of 2007 and opened to the public earlier this year, with the Six Apart team saying that they “have a lot of respect for what [the Pownce] team has done and believe we share a common vision about making the Internet more social.

Pownce co-founder Leah Culver said at the Pownce blog that: “We’re bittersweet about shutting down the service but we believe we’ll come back with something much better in 2009. We love the Pownce community and we will miss you all.

“We’re very happy that Six Apart wants to invest in growing the vision that we the founders of Pownce believe so strongly in and we’re very excited to take our vision to all of Six Apart’s products.

“[Pownce co-founder Mike Malone] and I have joined Six Apart as part of their engineering team and we’re looking forward to being a part of the talented group that has created amazing tools for blogging and publishing.”

Culver continues: “Since we’d like for you to have access to all your Pownce messages, we’ve added an export function. Visit pownce.com/settings/export/ to generate your export file. You can then import your posts to other blogging services such as Vox, TypePad, or WordPress.”

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