July 2, 2007

I Got Pownced By Kevin Rose

Some of you may have heard that Digg’s Kevin Rose released his latest project, Pownce, last week. Contrary to what everyone else online is saying, I think it looks like a cool little app that allows you to share links, pictures, and thoughts with exactly who you want everytime you send something to your friends. It could be all of them, some of them, one of them, these two but no one else, everyone except this one, etc. This is all well and good to everyone else online, but to me the rabbit hole runs a lot deeper.

As you may also know, I am currently working on a social web application, Echonote, which also happens to be the first startup here on SoB. What you may not know is what exactly Echonote is and does because well, it hasn’t been released yet. To get you up to speed, it is a cool little app that allows you to share links, pictures, and thoughts with exactly who you want everytime you send something to your friends. It could be all of them, some of them, one of them, these two but no one else, everyone except this one, etc. [Cue scratching turntables and music fadeout]

I can hear you now, “Wait a second, Echonote sounds a lot like Pownce.” Well for better or worse, you’d be right. But before we go any further, let’s take a look at the similarities and differences between the two.

With all of those things considered, should Echonote cower, run like a mouse, and give up to avoid Kevin Rose’s Pownce attack? I think not. There’s no way I’m giving up my labor of love to this feeble competitor. Yes, even with all that Kevin Rose has going for him, I do consider Pownce to be a feeble competitor because of one key issue, the intended audience. Pownce merely offers a solution to a market that already has the same solution; they have IM, Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, etc. On the contrary, Echonote aims to bring an entirely different audience into this “new” social web experience.

With that in mind, I propose a duel to Kevin Rose. Mano y mano. A friendly competition between Pownce and Echonote: Whoever obtains the most active users one year from now[let’s say July 4th] will take the cake. To each his own so Kevin, be as creative as you like when deciding what your cake is. If I win? I will receive leaderboard space on Digg for 24 continuous hours within the bounds of your advertising terms and conditions. I look forward to your response Kevin.

What do you think? Will Pownce survive? Does Echonote have a fleeting chance? Feel free to bash Pownce and/or me in the comments and stick around and see what happens in the action-packed Conley vs. Rose duel.