Pownce, a mash-up of instant messaging, file-transfer, and Twitter-like features lies down for the great recline on 15-December-2008: The service was intended to make it easier for groups of friends to exchange messages, invitations, pictures, and other communications. It was a great success in getting people to use it, but one expects not on the monetization side.
As appears to be a trend, the founders Ariel Waldman and Mike Malone, are shuttering the service, going to work for another firm (in this case, Six Apart), and selling their Pownce technology to Six Apart as part of the deal. Six Apart is one of two major blog-software and hosting firms, developing Movable Type and hosting TypePad and Vox. (WordPress is the other major pure-play firm in that space.)
This move mirrors the shut down Values of n, a company run by Rael Dornfest, who will turn off its two hosted offerings and take a job with Twitter, bringing along his intellectual property. (See "I Want Sandy and Stikkit Melt Away on 8-December-2008.")
Pownce Recoils, Dead on 15-December-2008
Pownce, a mash-up of instant messaging, file-transfer, and Twitter-like features lies down for the great recline on 15-December-2008: The service was intended to make it easier for groups of friends to exchange messages, invitations, pictures, and other communications. It was a great success in getting people to use it, but one expects not on the monetization side.
As appears to be a trend, the founders Ariel Waldman and Mike Malone, are shuttering the service, going to work for another firm (in this case, Six Apart), and selling their Pownce technology to Six Apart as part of the deal. Six Apart is one of two major blog-software and hosting firms, developing Movable Type and hosting TypePad and Vox. (WordPress is the other major pure-play firm in that space.)
This move mirrors the shut down Values of n, a company run by Rael Dornfest, who will turn off its two hosted offerings and take a job with Twitter, bringing along his intellectual property. (See "I Want Sandy and Stikkit Melt Away on 8-December-2008.")
Am I the only one that thinks Six Apart is foolish for announcing this with short notice of shutdown and a migration strategy to very different services? Better to leave the Pownce community intact and work openly to transfer them... treating it as a simple account data migration issue is going to alienate users.