Kevin Rose launches his Instant Messaging network, Pownce

Filed under: Business, Design, Developer, Internet, Web services, Social Software

Kevin Rose launches his Instant Messaging network, Pownce

by Chris Gilmer Jun 27th 2007

It was known that Kevin Rose of Digg fame has been working with a small team on something to do with instant messaging for a little while now. Well, the kittie kat jumped, or should I say Pownced out of the bag on Tuesday night.

Pownce is a way to send anything from messages, files, links and events to friends online. It runs care of Adobe's Apollo runtime platform, taking advantage of its many benefits like building one application for Mac, PC and Linux operating systems, and Amazons S3 file storage. So in order to use it, AIR must be downloaded and installed first.

First thing you do to get started with Pownce is to create a network of friends that you want to share items with, then you can choose whether to send it to the whole list, or specific people. Basically, whoever you want to read or see you item, will be able to. It's free, and ad supported.

Pownce is still in an invite only mode so the system can be monitored and scaled accordingly. Users who want to get in on this application can sign up on the Pownce website. Look out for a full review on DownloadSquad when we are lucky enough to score an invite.

Tags: adobe, apollo, digg, kevin rose, KevinRose, messaging, pownce

Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)

june said 9:47PM on 6-27-2007

Fail.

A better, open, standardized, industry backed instant messaging already exists: Jabber. Created by people who actually have a clue. It has *a lot* of thought put into it and supports a wide array of functionality. It is much more than a traditional instant messaging system. Unfortunately it lacks user-share due to lack of publicity and 'switching' costs (although there really isn't any switching cost since gateways to all the other major IM networks exist). Why the hell would anyone use pownce?

Chris said 10:50PM on 6-27-2007

Oh, so it's like Tubes, but with additional software requirements, and ads. Neat.

hazard said 11:29PM on 6-27-2007

looks more like a Skype knock-off - without voice. although the Event functionality could be interesting? Anyone have an invite??

@june
Jabber may be "more" than an instant messenger .. but it doesn't appear that way - out of the box!

@Chris
tubes is not cross platform!

Danny said 12:23PM on 6-28-2007

Don’t judge it before you test it.

Wolfman-K said 4:29PM on 6-28-2007

It looks like Twitter meets File sharing meets traditional IM. Its a neat concept but every aspect of it has been done, and done well. It will be interesting to see if this is Rose's greatest achievement or his first flop....

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