The Tao Of Joe

Pownce invites were all the rage yesterday and again today though it seemed to be losing some traction on Twitter today. It is still the second most popular topic on Twitter… behind the iPhone. The loss of traction could be a result of all the people that got an invite yesterday heading over to Pownce and thus reducing the volume here on Twitter. I am sure you can see whatever you choose from these screenshots I have used to illustrate my point.

Over the next several weeks I expect to see a lot of posts on blogs discussing the merits of Pownce vs. Twitter. The signal to noise ratio is already off the chart, yet I still hope to provide some meaningful discussion for others to chew on with this post.

First though, a disclaimer of sorts, I abhor popularity contests and even more so, the culture of clique coolness that has permeated American society since the mid-nineties which I believe can be traced back to the airing of MTV’s - The Real World in 1992. Sure, it goes back much further if you count high school, but that’s my point, until the mid-nineties this kind of thing was left behind as you entered adulthood and was unacceptable in the real world inhabited by adults.

On the heels of “The Real World” came other reality TV shows like “Survivor,” meanwhile this coincided with the advent of the internet and the world wide web. Soon reality tv themes began to show up on the almost live web.

One show that comes to mind immediately is “thespot.com.” Formed in 1995 it really hit it’s heyday in 1996, a web hybrid of The Real World meets Melrose Place, I remember checking in several times a day to read the online diaries chronicling the adventures of Tara, Michelle, Jeff and Carrie, and even believed that they were real people rather than fictional characters for some time. I kept reminding myself that even though I didn’t go in for ‘this sort of thing’ in my television habits, this was the frontier of the world wide web and therefore worthy of my interest if for no other reason than to be at the leading edge of what was happening online. By 1997 the creator and partners of “The Spot” were heading toward bankruptcy, having exploited the success of the show too quickly by saturating the market with copy-cat shows diluting “The Spot’s” strength in a still fledgling almost live web.

Fast forward to November 2003 and it was inevitable that MySpace, the social networking site, finally made the scene and cashed in on a cash cow as a champion of the “Cult of Popularity.” Where other web ventures failed, I’m thinking Classmates.com, MySpace recognized the ’social’ aspect of hooking up with your classmates, flatmate’s, workmates and anyone who ran with the crowd you were or wanted to be in on the live web and added the ability to establish and maintain “friends” thereby ushering in a new era of social media. Now sites like HotOrNot.com began to look less and less interesting - so what you have 10 stars, I have 500 friends!

Popularity contests were in vogue again and you could be whoever you wanted from the anonymity of your Mac or PC in your office or bedroom. Yes, the real you didn’t necessarily matter anymore either, in the online popularity game, just as in Second Life, you could be anyone as long as you could follow the current trends and populate your site with all the right stuff, pictures, mp3’s, stories and most especially - friends. As in real life, so goes the online world, the more friends you have, the more friends requests you receive and if you are into the popularity game, the happier you will be.

Which finally brings me to my point with regard to Twitter and Pownce.

Now I can’t say with any certainty whether or not this is true for you, for me the thing that instantly drew me to Twitter was the realization that this popularity contest of social media sites had been turned upside down, it all worked backwards on Twitter. Where you had to make individual friendship requests on MySpace and sit back and wait for the end receivers approval of you into their inner circle, on Twitter you could make anyone who shared their update on the public timeline your friend - period. Of course it is all a matter of semantics, if the people you’ve friended on Twitter don’t friend you back then you are only a follower of theirs. Still Twitter is kinder and gentler about this whole relationship thing and doesn’t rub your face in it. You can log in and see that you have 465 friends and 147 followers and feel good about yourself. Even if the truth of those numbers is that you really have 147 (or less) friends and are following another 324 people who haven’t accepted your friend request that they received when you added them as a friend on Twitter.

In a nutshell, Twitter is all about following, following the tweets of other Twitterers that you find interesting for whatever reason you choose. And you don’t have to worry about being slapped in the face for it either. It is fun for all of us who are not social butterflies. As an INTP, I love to follow others tweets and wring them out for their particular social significance and meaning for me in relation to that particular point in time. Often I hear about interesting things on the web that I might of never thought to look up or find myself. In the end I can’t bring myself to play the friend game for the sake of trying to have as many friends as I can possibly attract. I have always been suspect of those who do play the popularity game for the sake of popularity alone. I understand and get the band and comic thing on MySpace for instance a lot easier than I get the 500 friends and counting.

Then there came Pownce.

During the explosive hype of the iPhone last week I noticed a little blurb about Pownce on Techmeme, that was last Wednesday, and desperate for news about anything other than iPhone, I visited Pownce and then blogged about it here.

The first thing I did was go to my Twitter homepage and ask if anybody had an invite to Pownce and to my surprise, nobody, not even Robert Scoble knew what it was, so I told them what I knew from Pownce’s frontpage. “It’s in alpha and it is Leah Culver and Kevin Rose’s new startup and it is for ’sending stuff to friends’ according to the website,” I replied over a couple of tweets. An hour or so later Scoble came back on to gloat that he had Pownce access and a new profile in place. So began my introduction to the quality and spirit of Pownce and what kind of social media site it intended to be.

Several days later a visitor who commented on my blog, Pierro, sent me an invite to Pownce. Leah Culver never responded though I did blog about her new site, even linking her personal blog and asking if she could spare one for evaluation purposes. Seems that if your important enough to receive an invite then you’ll be on good terms with someone who is important enough to have gotten an invite who could then vouch for your coolness and get you in. Uh - Ok. So, my buddy Pierro got me in and that was when it became even more clear what kind of site Pownce was or wasn’t in comparison to Twitter.

Once inside Pownce every effort is made to be sure that you, the user, are aware that only you and your friends will receive your messages unless of course you choose to send a particular message to the public. Like MySpace you have to have a person accept your friend request if you are going to receive their messages otherwise you are only a fan and will only see those messages that they have chosen to dole out to their fans - er… the public. It is explicitly explained to you what a fan is as well just in case you didn’t get the message the first time. This is what you will see displayed after you add someone as a friend in Pownce - “You are a fan of xxxxxx! If xxxxxx confirms that you two are friends, you will be able to exchange notes. Until then, you’ll receive xxxxxx public notes.”

I did search high and low both inside and outside of Pownce to see if I could find anything close to an official FAQ from Pownce explaining it’s choice of terminology for friends and fans and how to search for and add friends, but alas, I could not find anything beyond the legal disclaimer and some notes such as this on my home page - “Only notes you send to ‘the public’ can be seen by the world at large. See your public profile.” There are links however to ‘Advertise’, if you are interested in running ads on Pownce, as well as links to ‘about’, ‘blog’, ‘legal’ and ‘download’(for their desktop app).
Overall, Pownce is for the crowd who likes their privacy and enjoy exclusivity. Sure, you can throw a bone to the masses via a public message from the sanctity of your clique if you feel like it but in the end there really isn’t any risk in that either, is there? The worse that could happen is that someone might become your fan. If that is what you are into then I’d say Pownce is for you. But if you’re interested in meeting new people and learning new, interesting and not-so-interesting things from anyone anywhere then come on over to Twitter and open an account and leave it in it’s default state as a public NOT private account and enjoy the promise of everything you hoped the internet might offer when you first embraced it a decade or so ago.

As for Pownce pwning Twitter, not a chance, they are different things for different people. If Jack Dorsey continues to walk to the beat of his own drum I am sure he will continue to enjoy the success that comes to those who are ahead of their time.

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