I received an invitation to Pownce the other day. I must say I was really curious about Pownce when I first read about Pownce on Techcrunch. After several days of using it I am on the fence if I will continue to use it or not.

What is Pownce?

Pownce is a way to send messages, files, links, and events to your friends. You'll create a network of the people you know and then you can share stuff with all of them, just a few of them, or even just one other person really fast.

From the Desktop software image on their web site it almost looks like an IM program, but it is not really one. Then again it sort of is.

First off, you do not need to download the program available on the site. You can do everything you need to do on the web site! I did download the program for the Mac and runs and looks nice. But I really don’t need one more program running on my computer.

Second, it is nice to post little public blurbs on Pownce. But doesn’t that just make it another blog/tumblelog/twitter thing? Yeah, but the fun part comes when you are able to share links, files, events, and other things with specific friends or group of friends privately.

For example: I want to share with a few friends a joke, link or file not meant for public consumption. I couldn’t blog about it for all to see. Yes I could email it to them but email can get lost, have bandwidth limits, or be just plain cumbersome. But if my friends were on Pownce, I could send it to that group of friends privately. It would be posted on their Pownce page. They could comment on the posting or access the link/file any time they wished. Like IM the posting shows up as a little blurb. But unlike IM you don’t have to view the message right away. Check out my Pownce page here.

Both the client and web interface on Pownce is straightforward and easy to use. The learning curve is almost non-existent. But will I use it beyond the next few weeks? It really depends on the traction Pownce gets from my friends who join. Without friends or contacts, and it’s true on any social network, it is difficult to be…social.

For some reason I don’t think the current feature set is the be all end all Pownce. But it is a promising start.

If you would like an invite, I have a few to give. Just email me at the usual places. I’ll hook you up :)