Pownce Review : Is Pownce The Instant Messaging System Of The Future?

Get ready to Pownce!

Pownce is coming and its about time. If you have been looking for a better way to send messages, files, links, and events to friends and/or contacts Pownce might just be the solution you are looking for.

What can you do with Pownce?

 Create a network of friends, contacts, and fans.

 Instant message your friends, groups, contacts, or your entire network.

 Send files to one person, a group, or all your contacts within your network.

 Share links to interesting sites, articles, sites, videos, etc…

 Notify your contacts, groups or your entire network about upcoming events.

How can you sign up for Pownce?

At this time Pownce is limiting the number of sign ups so they can test their system. To become a member you have to have an invite. I have 5 invites that I will be giving out on Monday, July 23rd around noon (central time). At around noon on Monday I will put up a post and give away 5 invites to the first people that comment on that post (more about this later). You can also goto Pownce.com and enter your email address to get an invite as soon as Pownce has more invites to give out.

Behind the scenes

Signing up for Pownce is simple and easy. You enter your profile information. You can upload a photo to use as your profile picture or go with the default image. You get four profiles themes to choose from (picture below).

Once you have selected your theme and have your profile setup its time to send your first message. This is where Pownce shines. Enter your message, select what type of message you want to send (message, link, file, or event), and then select who you want to send your message too.

It is really that easy. Send messages to your entire network, send a link to your newest podcast or video, share links to your favorite websites and blogs, share a picture you just took with your camera, let your network know about a party, get together, or maybe your next internet radio talk show. Pownce makes it easy to stay in contact with all the people in your network. To make it even easier to get your latest messages you can download the Pownce desktop software.

What is the Pownce desktop software?

Do you already use IM software like Yahoo IM, AIM, or ICQ? Pownce’s desktop software works in much the same way.

 — from the Pownce desktop software download page…

What is this?

The desktop software makes it even faster to read and send notes to your friends. Some great features it has:

 Alerts you when a new note comes in.
 Auto-updates every 60 seconds.
 Send any kind of note.
 Progress bar for sending files.

Do I need it?

Nope, you can do anything on the website that you can do in the software. However, it’s faster, easier, and more fun to do a whole bunch of things with the software, so we’d definitely recommend it.

Meet the Pownce team

Who is behind Pownce? — from the Pownce about page…

Pownce is brought to you by a bunch of geeks who were frustrated trying to send stuff from one cube to another.

The team consists of Leah Culver, Daniel Burka, Kevin Rose, and Shawn Allen. Together, we formed a wee company with a great big name, Megatechtronium, that makes this software.

Leah devotes all of her days (and a lot of her nights) coding and developing the web system, Daniel creates the user interface for the website and desktop app, Kevin works with the team brainstorming features and advising the direction of the site, and Shawn develops the desktop app and the API.

Pownce has potential!

I really like what I am seeing so far from Pownce. I think it will be a great way to notify my contacts when I have a new post, we can send each other audio recordings we have made, and we can send links to each other without creating more of the email that clutters up our inboxes. One of the major drawbacks at this time is that there are just not enough people using Pownce because they are not giving out many invites, however as soon as enrollment is opened to everyone it looks like it will be a better way to message people than sending 20 emails a day. If Pownce takes off and becomes the Instant Messaging service of the masses (like I hope it will) I will be one of the first people to happily uninstall Yahoo IM from my computer and use Pownce exclusively. Hopefully Pownce will be able to deliver and people will make the switch. The biggest plus I see is that Pownce might kill off Twitter. I’m not a fan of Twitter as I see it as an almost useless application that needs to improve or disappear.

Like I said earlier I have 5 invites that I will be giving away on Monday, July 23rd at around noon. I’ll try to get more invites, but at this time I only have 5. You can checkout my Pownce page http://pownce.com/WildBill/ and if you are already using Pownce please add me as a friend. I hope to see you all on Pownce very soon.

Update: Jeremiah Owyang has a great roundup of Pownce reviews, Keeping track of the Pownce Reviews.