R.I.P Pownce, so who is next? Jaiku?
by Stii
Pownce is officially over tomorrow. Dead. Killed. Twitter is king of the micro-blogging sites and it just makes one wonder “Who is next?” If we look at these interesting little Alexa graphs, it is evident just why Pownce croaked, but then you throw Jaiku in the mix and a sort of interesting story unfolds.
Lets go one step further and throw that site with the ridiculous headless pig, Plurk, into the mix and it becomes even more clear that Jaiku is going one way. Down.
Hang on! Maybe I’m talking way too soon. Jaiku is owned by Google. Thus it might not die as soon as Pownce and might live on Google‘s cash machine for quite a long time! Who knows, but one thing is quite evident. Its not going anywhere earth-shaking soon.
Twitter, dispite not having a business model and being an unreliable, unstable R&D project still proves to be king and would likely stay up there for a very, very long time.
I’m not sure any of the other main microblogging platforms will be changing hands anytime soon. The thing about Pownce is that it didn’t really die, but instead was acquired by Six Apart to (most likely) be repurposed under their own brand.
Of the other main platforms still around, all have their own communities and features to keep them busy. The only thing I can really envision happening is someone else launching a new platform in an attempt to compete more directly with Twitter.
What I find really interesting about Pownce’s demise is that with services like Twitpic, people posting urls in their Twitter messages, using Twitter for conversations and generally posting status messages in Twitter, Twitter is being used for a similar purpose Pownce was designed for.
One of the comments about Twitter has been its simplicity and focus on that one question about what we are doing and yet most of the posts on Twitter are not about status, they are microblog posts, conversational messages or link shares.
As for Jaiku, short of a big announcement or some amazing implementation, it seems that Google bought Jaiku to let it fade away …
@Mike fair enough, they were bailed out by Six Apart, but really, if one look at the Alexa graphs (and I know its not accurate, but its not completely wrong either) it was going nowhere fast! I’m certainly going to keep an eye on Six Apart and their plans for Pownce! It would be great to see what they do with it… I’m sure there would be others that would try, but it will be HARD to compete. They would have to have an exceptional strategy.
@Paul this is the beauty of Twitter for me. There are more services built around Twitter than you can shake a stick at! Even though it has terrible limitations and restrictions to its API. It is quite frankly a phenomenon. I think you’re right on the money about Jaiku.
You may want to check out yonkly: http://yonkly.com
It’s the first “create your own microblog” that integrates with Twitter.
It does look interesting, thanks Scott!