Still (slightly) Underwhelmed by Pownce…Or is it Microblogging In General?
I mentioned the new “Twitter-killer” (tm Michael Arrington) Pownce briefly in my love letter to Facebook earlier this week, but wanted to get into it a bit deeper now.
Blogosphere reaction to Pownce has been varied so far, although I’ve found it to be generally leaning toward positive, with the caveat that Twitter is pretty much just as good. Scoble likes it, but still prefers Twitter; Arrington seems to be leaning towards sticking with Twitter; it got extremely positive reviews on Mashable; but Steve Rubel linked to a more tepid overview (though he has yet to review it himself).
I myself was initially wary of it, and far too zonked from spending time adding contacts to my new Facebook profile to bother doing the same thing all over again in Pownce (a few exceptions aside, I still haven’t managed the time or patience, as of this writing…I’ll have to work on that).
After playing with it some more, I am still semi-underwhelmed. And as one of the last social media geeks without a Twitter account, I am the audience the most ripe to be won over by Pownce. Perhaps my problem is as I stated earlier this week: why is this necessary? Maybe I’m not a Pownce or Twitter girl, and my issue is that I can use email or my blog just as easily to communicate my thoughts and activities.
On the plus side, I definitely like the “Add friends of your friends” feature. When I get around to actually getting some more contacts up and running, that will most definitely come in handy. But I don’t want to do that until my profile is complete, which leads me to my major gripe:
The photo upload function has stalled for anyone using Internet Explorer. It’s a good thing hardly anyone uses IE (snerk). It’s been three days since I signed up, and my profile is still photo-less. I actually have Firefox on my personal laptop, so I may go in and make another effort when I get home tonight…but then again, I may not bother. I’ll let the Ugly Grey Box Where My Face Should Be speak for itself. (The good news is that Leah Culver herself got back to me when I emailed in this particular gripe, the bad news is she gave me no indication of when the bug might be ironed out.)
In the grand scheme of things, this is not a big deal. But as a person trying to decide one way or another whether I will continue using the site at all? It definitely bugs (no pun intended).
Once the photo issue is ironed out, I will give Pownce another try. I definitely enjoy that Facebook has a Pownce application, and I also like the desktop feature. I think what I really need to do is figure out whether or not there’s room in my brain for microblogging; until I do that, I don’t think I can review tools like this with any impartiality.
Technorati tags: Pownce; microblogging; Leah Culver
