Is Pownce The Answer?

In the recent discussion about Twitter there was a feeling, from some, that it wasn’t well-suited for discussions. Indeed Andy Powell commented:

i think you are right to question whether using Twitter for one-to-one or few-to-few conversations is the right approach. i (eventually) stopped Twittering on Friday cos it felt like we were mis-using it.

And yet a few minutes ago I smiled at the following comments from Andy, Paul Miller and Pete Johnston:

andypowe11 The moment i wake up / before i put on my makeup / i tweet a little tweet for you … about 1 hour agofrom im

paulmiller @andypowe11 – makeup? about 1 hour ago from iTweet in reply to andypowe11

PeteJ @paulmiller: Company dress code about 1 hour agofrom im in reply to PaulMiller

PeteJ @paulmiller: (senior staff) about 1 hour agofrom im in reply to PaulMiller

Brilliant! I have to admit, I enjoy Pete’s witticisms. But if on Twitter you follow Pete or Paul but not Andy, you’ll miss the context and just get the two of them talking about make-up with the reference ot the Aretha Franklin song.

The pithy one-liners are useful, I feel, but I’m not convinced that Twitter is the best tool for this.

But also on today’s Twitter feed I received an announcement from TechCrunch saying that Pownce is now open to subscription, after a closed testing period. The Pownce About me page states that:

Pownce is a way to send stuff to your friends. What kind of stuff? You can send just about anything: music, photos, messages, links, events, and more. You can do it all on our web site, or install our lightweight desktop software that lets you get out of the browser.

Now isn’t our requirement to send stuff (witticisms, jokes and useful snippets of information)? Time for experimentation, I think. And it might be useful to subscribe quickly – before your preferred user id is taken.