Narcissim Reaches a New High (1/2)
As some of you may have noticed, I can be somewhat of a geek at times. I can't help it, I like shiny things.
Oh yeah, Steph: Thanks for the Soup. I'm feeling much better.
Anyway those who are extremely techy will be up on the tech scene, and will know of the recent creation—by the makers of "digg.com"http://www.digg.com—of the social networking website pownce.com. That link won't really help you much, so here is a link to Ted's public profile so you can get an idea of what's going on.
Not that I necessarily understand exactly what is going on with Pownce, as evidenced by the miniscule amount of posts on my pownce page.1
p.(aside) by the way, pownce is pronounced POW – NCE, as in rhymes with kerPLOWnce. It's not "ponce", which is how a South African says "pants".
Everybody was really excited when pownce first debuted in beta mode (meaning the only way to sign up is to know somebody else who is signing up). People were primarily excited because of the creators, who are known for creating really interesting things.
I was one of these excited people. In fact, when Ted emailed me and asked if I wanted a pownce invite, I sent back something along the lines of:
YES! SEND PLEASE! SEND NOW! YOU RULE! YOU ARE THE MAN! TED THE MAN!
...all of which he agreed with and complied to.
But then I got over there, signed up my account, logged in, became Ted's "pownce friend", and started posting.
Within a few minutes I was asking myself, "what the hell is this thing?" It doesn't do anything. It's like myspace but only with the comments part of myspace. Which is absolutely, in my opinion, the worst part of myspace, if not the whole internet; the phrase, "thanks for the add" makes me cringe almost as much as the rare moments in my life when I've happened to come across clowns.
Admittedly, pownce seems to have an overt purpose: to share "notes", "files", "links", and "events".
The events part I could actually see being pretty cool, provided that your friends were on pownce. Of course it seems like the event planning throne is currently occupied by facebook and that monarch is ruling with an iron fist—probably not going anywhere soon.
Sharing links and files is ok I guess, but pretty well covered by email and blogs (although I think big fans of these new Web 2.0 style sites would suggest that email is slowly becoming obsolete and blogs are only a tiny fraction of a person's online presence).
So that only leaves notes. As far as I (and Ted) can tell, the primary purpose of notes on pownce seems to be along the lines of "look at me!!!" or just random twitter style ramblings.
Since you can't really get any information off of mine or Ted's pownce pages, here's some examples from the page of Justine Ezarik, one of the more prominent "hotties" in the world of tech. Everybody wants to be her friend, so her pownce page is pretty loaded. Keep in mind that these aren't Justine's entries, but those of her friends. Pownce streams the public entries of your friends through your own pownce page, resulting in a muddled stream of conciousness that is the "essence of pownce."
Actually, this post is out of control, so I'll make this 1 of 2 and post some actual pownce entries in a follow-up entry. Plus I liked that last sentence.
In the meantime, if you want your own Pownce account, email me2 and I'll send you an oh-so-holy invite. I have like 10 left.
So, I’m a little behind in the tech world, but will you put me in your blogroll? I promise not to thank you for the add…
I’m also still trying to make facebook useful – don’t spend a lot of time there, but I like it.