Pownce will kill Twitter

Pownce is similar Twitter, only better. I’ve been using it now for a couple days and I’m far more impressed with the the user experience and reliability than I am with Twitter. Some experts will swear Jaiku is the one to watch but there are a couple things which make Pownce a winner in my opinion. The big one is the ability to send links, files and calendar events which both Twitter and Jaiku lack.

While Pownce has a very similar profile page to Twitter the overall structure seems more intuitive to me. There is a bio of who I am, better structured friends listing plus the added column of other social networking profiles that I belong to.

The site is still in Alpha stages so I’ll forgive them for only having a choice of four themes to select from.

One of the best tools I like about Pownce is the Social Network profiles. There is a selection of almost every social network site out there and you can setup all the ones you belong to. You also have the option of adding your Instant Messenger contact details as well as various websites that you own.

The net result of this is a Profile box which appears on your main profile page.

Website aside I think Pownce’s best value comes in the desktop application they’ve created. Instead of writing their own software Pownce decided to build their desktop application using Adobe’s Integrated Runtime (AIR) environment.

AIR is a cross-operating system runtime that allows developers to use existing web development skills to build and deploy rich Internet applications for the desktop. The result is a really slick user interface that just works.

From the desktop application you can send messages, links, files (up to 10MB) and create events that can go to individual contacts, all friends or the public in general.

What has become clear through applications like this is that if Twitter is to survive it better start playing catchup as Pownce and Jaiku are hot on their heels.