The amazing thing about Twitter is that despite its ongoing and frustrating technical problems, people keep on using it. You know you’re red-hot when most of your users continue to love what you do even when you screw them around.
Still, you have to wonder if there will be a point in time when Twitter’s technical troubles start to make people think twice about not only using it but may get them to consider alternatives such as Pownce and Jaiku. The Twitter franchise can’t be so impenetrable that it can continue to roll along as a useful but much-troubled, service.
I’d really like to use Pownce because it has a richer set of features, including things such as the ability to share files. And while Twitter become the dominant player, Pownce continues to quietly make it ways as the second-place player that tries harder.
The biggest challenge facing Pownce is there’s a raging party happening in Twitter’s backyard, and no one wants to leave a rockin’ party for a party with fewer people – even if the Twitter party gets out of hand from time to time.
Anyway, I’m going to log into Pownce today. Partly because it’s time to take another look at what’s going on, partly because Twitter’s ongoing technical issues, and partly because Daniel Burka, one of Pownce’s founders and a fellow Canadian, did such a great job yesterday at meshU.
Update: According to GigaOm, Twitter has raised $15-million. Hopefully, it will use some of the money to improve the service to five nines reliability. Loren Feldman has some thoughts on why people tolerate Twitter and all its technical troubles.
5 Comments
Hi Mark!
Well, one of the strange things I’ve seen lately is that Kevin Rose is using Twitter much more than before. When he promotes Digg stuff on his Facebook fan page we does it via Twitter. That doesn’t seems good in my opinion, or better, it’s a sign that Twitter is here to stay. It would be great if both companies would get together.
I’m sure Twitter engineers are more than happy to have Leah on board
P
Keep rocking my friend! Had fun on MeshU?
I think I may join you in an experimental move to Pownce.
Me too! In fact, just mainly sticking to FF and GR today, I’ve found a lot of good content and made way more comments than when I just hang out on Twitter.
I’m on Pownce as eng1ne, please find me there.
I was eager to get on Pownce when it first launched, and I’ve used it sporadically to send music to some friends. I fought against joining twitter, but I really had to see what it was all about, and getting on Twitter, there is such a wealth of infomration on their that is readily available that it truly is addictive. I know use it with a few of my firends, but I mainly use it to keep an eye on whats happening in the startup community.
That said, I hate how undependable it is. I think Pownce is on the right track they just need to realize that being able to use Text Messaging is huge to ‘cross the chasm’. Hey Daniel, Leah, and Kevin – I would love to shoot an video clip that I just recorded, or a photo I just took with my BlackBerry too all my buddies at once. I’m sure its already on the development schedule.
I’d be happy for two nines of reliability.
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[...] There’s even MOAR talk today about leaving Twitter for other services. [...]
[...] A Chance for Pownce to Pounce? | Mark Evans “The amazing thing about Twitter is that despite its ongoing and frustrating technical problems, people keep on using it. You know you’re red-hot when most of your users continue to love what you do even when you screw them around.” (tags: twitter scalability) [...]