Once upon a time in the land of virtual worlds there lived a little service called Twitter. He (ok it could be she) had a great idea about sending messages to friends. So he released his idea and low and behold it became popular. It worked and people loved it. All was well as groups of friends shared in a fashion they hadn’t thought possible before. Communities formed and relationships built and all was well.
Then came along another little service called Pownce (let us say Pownce is she for the sake of equal gender participation). Pownce loved Twitter but felt hampered at times, and so her idea was released and low and behold it became popular. Friends found out about here, told others, and now the groups started forming. But wait something unforeseen happened.
How could these established groups maintain contact using one or the other? The discussions began. People changed from T to P and then back again from P to T. Groups all over the place were stating similar things. All the twitterers and powncers were amiss. What would happen? Would the grey knights Googley and MicroHard do something?
We can’t say everyone lived happily ever after. We do know that things change. Everybody is still here. The relationships between people in the groups haven’t changed, just the means of communicating. Twitter and Pownce continue to develop because both can see they have to. The real beauty of this is us. We, by using whatever platform we choose, are influencing what in the end will be a changed platform. Will someone be able to develop the DIY concept in microblogging, that is create one area of all my friends but choose the features I want to use with friends, groups or the public timeline? And that has been the neatest things about this episode. We are watching it unfold as well as being part of it.
Tinfoiling 
Gene,
It’s funny how Twitter and Pounce have taken on a playground feel for me. It’s my recess. And now I have to choose which group I’m going to hang out with during my 15 minute break I allow myself.
All the really cool kids were on Twitter. And then the new kid came to school – Pownce…..I’m so conflicted.
But you’re right – “ALL” of this, social media stuff, is just a new communication device. It will always be evolving. It makes my head hurt.
Wow, you changed your header image to a little Twitter birdie and a Pownce P(!) I get a sneaky suspicion that you really, really care about this technology choice. š
For me Twitter (and Facebook statuses) are mostly fun, sometimes useful, and almost always worth the little bit of time it takes to catch up — because the messages are short, and because it’s easy to get rid of people who just re-transmit their blogs (onto Twitter). And it’s a bit of a geek-sport to express my own blurbs in the 140 available characters.
To me, this description is just about the opposite of the RSS feed reader “river of news” experience which has room for detailed posts and always, always ends up with an in-depth session where I spend too much time reading too many blog posts.
I’ve never tried Pownce. When it first came out I picked up a few key points from all of the talk about it, and they’ve kept me from trying it out, namely that you could aggregate various streams using RSS, etc.
To me, that just sounds too much like the feed reader experience.
It’s interesting how social media is so good at bringing groups of people together while at the same time fragmenting us as individuals.
Or is that just me?