I guess the fact that Mark Zuckerberg was announced king of the world confirms the idea that social networking is taking over the world. There are already thousands of social networking websites out, and there are more and more being released each day. Only some of them are actually successful, though. Obviously, MySpace and Facebook have millions of users, but some smaller start-ups are quickly becoming a major competition.
I use social networks all of the time. I love them. I love getting in touch with my friends that I don’t see anymore, sending quick messages to people I do see and meeting new people to share and exchange ideas with. Also, not having much to do this summer, social networking, and sites like Pownce, Facebook and Twitter have helped me be less bored (aka waste time).
A few weeks ago, a new service was released, that was invite only. It’s called Pownce, and was developed by the founder of Digg, and internet legend, Kevin Rose. The invites were as good as gold, and were being sold on eBay for $10.
The service is similar to Twitter, in that users post “updates” for their friends to see, but with Pownce, it isn’t just short text updates. With Pownce, users can send the usual text messages out, as well as links, files and events. Pownce also lets you make ‘groups’, so you don’t send out a message meant for your friends, to your parents, too.
I really enjoy using Pownce. None of my real friends use it yet (no one really likes to constantly change their ‘main’ social network), but I do have a lot of Pownce friends. It’s fun to read what people have to say, see cool links that they send out and tell them what I think about it.
The biggest thing about Pownce, I think, is the ability to easily reply, and get replies. Each post has its own area for posting replies, along with a rating system, where the users can rate the post. This is great because, for example, I posted a link to my first blog post, and people were able to reply and tell me what they thought. It helped me determine what was good and what was bad and what I could improve.
Social networks are the future of the internet, and the more that come out each day, the more options the consumers have. Pownce is a great example of people seeing a problem, and building their own application to fix it.
