Mr. Ha at VentureBeat has a good overview of the deal and what it means for the team. Ha notes, "Culver and Mike Malone, who were Pownce’s main developers, will move on to similar roles at Six Apart. Though Pownce won’t be a part of Six Apart, you can be sure the two will be working on something related to the “rebalancing” effort that Six Apart chief executive Chris Alden mentioned." Apparently Kevin Rose will remain on as a Six Apart advisor.

The sad reality here is that Pownce had a HUGE opportunity that was wasted by Pownce co-founder Kevin Rose. Instead of Kevin using his huge network to push Pownce, he pushed their biggest competitor Twitter. With 75,000 followers on Twitter, Rose could have easily moved (at least a large percentage of) them over to Pownce and made the service more active. I’ve watched how loyal Rose’s fans are and they would have helped to build Pownce up, instead of allowing it to be sold for scraps. It’s a pretty shocking business strategy.

I can’t imagine how the team must feel building a tool that one of the founders doesn’t even actively promote! Take this as a lesson for your startup, actively use your own service or watch it fall apart!

This service even includes new services Posterous and Identi.ca.

People referenced in the video: Sarah Perez, Marshall Kirkpatrick, Robert Scoble, Louis Gray, Steven Hodson, Corvida and Steve Rubel. Our special tickettaker is Tamar Weinberg.

This morning Duncan Riley is reporting that some Twitter users have noted ads in their stream as well. I haven’t seen any ads yet and I’ve refreshed several times, tried visiting other pages, etc. Twitter needs a business plan now and advertising might just be the first step. Some have speculated that they are aggregating and selling data trends, though I doubt it. My guess is that the team has more coming in terms of monetization, especially when the apps built on the platform are already generating income. My business model idea is opt-in marketing for brands replacing email lists.

We’ve written about Twitter’s business model several times.

Don’t forget, Twitter has a song now – that means a lot towards something. Lastly, you can follow me on Twitter.

Update: I can’t tell for sure, but it looks like Duncan’s source is now saying that the supposed ad was just her background image and not an advertisement. As I noted above, selling ads would be only the first step to monetization and frankly wouldn’t be as effective as other potential ideas.

Update 2: Peter Kafka asked Twitter founder Biz Stone about ads on Twitter and his reply was "no".

We’ve written about Twitter and their server/capacity issues since day 1. This week we saw downtime which could be related to heavy usage at the future of web apps conference. Next week is Twitter’s superbowl: SXSW. To that end, Twitter developer Alex Payne has provided two updates related to how they plan to handle the SXSW traffic. This news comes on the same day that Pownce has released their API 2.0.

Here are the emails (my emphasis):

Tomorrow (Saturday, March 1st) Twitter will be offline from 6PM to 8:30PM PST. We’re adding additional read-slave databases and tuning the configuration on our existing databases.

You may have noticed some downtime and intermittent availability over the last 24 hours. This was the result of some additional caching measures that we put in place which caused an unexpected memory leak, triggering cascading failures across our cluster. We’ve since taken steps to correct this issue. Performance both internal and external to the site has been stable since noon PST, and we’re watching it closely.

Earlier this week we had a different incident in which some users appeared to be signed in as other users. This occurred while were testing a more recent version of Ruby and an alternative application server on one machine in our cluster. Due to our load balancing configuration, the issue quickly spread. We disabled the site and resolved the issue within fifteen minutes. It should not have effected API clients.

Both of these changes were the result of our testing potential performance improvements in preparation for South by Southwest (SXSW), a large annual multi-disciplinary conference held every March in Austin, Texas. This time last year, our growth started to take off around SXSW, and we want to be as reliable as possible during the event this year. We will be taking more cautious steps to improve our performance and reliability over the next week.

As part of those steps, I intend to decrease the number of allowed authenticated API requests per hour from 70 to 50 from Thursday, March 6th through Wednesday, March 12th. While we are taking steps to greatly increase our capacity (and have been doing so continuously, particular since our move to our current host), the API is our foremost source of traffic, and as such is the first place we look when trying to create some breathing room for our cluster. I appreciate your understanding, and I hope that 20 fewer requests per hour don’t impact your applications too drastically for the duration of the modified rate limit.

We also intend to put some extra abuse-prevention measures in place before the event. We’ve seen a general increase in abusive traffic over the last several months, and we simply can’t afford it during a heavy-traffic event. If you’ve been scraping Twitter or consuming public API feeds unfairly, be prepared for an unpleasant surprise.

Thanks, as always, for your patience and understanding. If you have any questions, concerns, or suggestions, please do let me know.

snippit from second email

As for the proposed decreased authenticated requests per hour: I’m open to suggestions. If 50 will put too much strain on your clients and there’s some other way that we can provide you with the data you need while decreasing the overall number of requests for this six day period, please let us know.

We’re not trying to pull the wool over anyone’s eyes or shortchange you after you’ve put in hard work on your applications. We’re always open to alternatives, and we’re always listening.

Today Arrington has apparently changed his tune on Pownce and notes, "Who knows, they (Pownce) may be here long after many of today’s "hot" startups are a distant memory." Here is a summary of the new features that apparently have changed his opinion:

• no more private beta, anyone can join
• updated, faster desktop client
• looks like you can add friends from other networks not just Pownce friends – not exactly sure how that works as of yet
• they have a new list of "featured followers" which Arrington says won’t just be a list of top users, but rather an editorialized list – will be interesting to see who shows up there
• there is an updated events page as well

Personally the mentioned updates aren’t that exciting to me — but moving out of private beta is the big shift and should show the viability for Pownce to shift into high gear. The issue for Pownce will continue to be whether it can draw in the names that have legions of followers; this is how the app will move to viral status and grow to Twitter-like levels. On a side note, I listed Pownce developer Leah Culver as one of 23 people I’d like to meet this year.

Check out all of our Pownce coverage — I continue to believe that Pownce is "pretty freakin’ sweet!" And heck, Pownce has a basic business model, something more than Twitter currently has.

In case you are using Pownce, you can friend me here. Here is our initial video review from last summer:

The key is what Leah says about "didn’t want to upset the community by adding those in later". This is so critical I believe. Go into it with these options, users know what to expect. Slap ads or charge for the service later on and you can immediately lose a large percentage of your userbase.

Here are a couple interesting snippets from the interview:

TC: What do you make of the debate going on this week in the blogosphere about the alleged inadequacy of Twitter’s business model? In the debate, some have praised Pownce for having established a business model right out of the gate by charging for premium messaging.

Culver: Pownce started off with ads and pro accounts because we didn’t want to upset our community by adding these in later versions. You can still use all the best parts of Pownce for free.

TC: Kevin Rose has raised $20 million for his previous startups Digg and Revision3 Corp., and the word is that VCs are lining up to invest in Pownce. Any update on financing?
 
Culver: To date, Pownce is self-funded (and bootstrapped), but that may change very soon. We’re at a transition point right now, and Pownce will certainly grow a lot in the next year.

Leah Culver is one of 23 people I’d like to meet in 2008.

Mike picked up the Uncov-bait, and wondered in the story title whether Pownce is headed for the Techcrunch deadpool.

I don’t know founder Leah Culver but I was wondering after reading both posts what some other startups might look like using Alexa. Uncov suggests that "you can look at virtually any Web 2.0 company and see a nearly-identical traffic graph". I would generally agree with that statement. Certainly Pownce has been overshadowed by Twitter based on API and those infected with Twitterdiction. I would suggest that Pownce is more on the lines of Tumblr than Twitter – in fact a marriage between Tumblr and Pownce might be sweet and long-lasting.

I selected Mint as my comparison site for this demo. It’s been written about a variety of times on Techcrunch, Mint won the Techcrunch award and they are now an advertiser on Techcrunch. Mint also has 5.45M funding, Pownce appears to have no funding. Using Uncov’s theory, I believe it’s a good comparison.

Here’s the Alexa comparison chart for both Mint and Pownce. I’ve animated it (5 sec) to show six months and seven days respectively. It’s easy to see that Pownce is ranked higher and slowly trending higher than Mint. So if based on an Alexa chart, Pownce is a fail, is Mint a fail as well?

Leah Culver from Pownce

Some commentary:

• Developed in 4 months with only one developer (Leah) – wow.
• Lots of open source usage – Sometimes I find this could be as bad as it can be good.
• Amazon S3 – Leah notes it’s cheaper and has been reliable so far
• Only one MySQL DB – this was a bit shocking – even just for redundancy
• "Expect anything" she says – and this is so right – no matter how much you plan, something will change your course
• Use version control – rollbacks are a good thing :)

Here are her slides:

What happened to Pownce? In the early days Kevin Rose and Leah Culver were using the tool to provide updates and there were many replies to each of their posts. Checking Kevin’s profile today, its down to one update every three days and even a call for a party pushed Digg with no mention of Pownce in the invite.

Then we had the public Digg post about whether Digg copied Pownce with some of its new features. Mathew has an overview of the issue.

Traffic continues to slide back as well per Alexa. And most of the users on my buddy list are using it for spamming marketing links. 

I still like the Pownce interface better than Twitter’s interface but if my "friends" aren’t on the network, then why use it? Are you still on Pownce? If so, please friend me so I can monitor usage of the tool.

Here are some details sent over earlier today:

Today, File Transfer comes to meebo! You can now seamlessly transfer files to your IM buddies, on meebo or off meebo, regardless of which IM network they’re on, no software or download required.

"We’re so happy to be debuting file transfer on meebo. This answers a huge feature request from our users," said Seth Sternberg, founder and CEO, meebo. "Please let us know what you think!"

At its core, File Transfer utilizes the Amazon (AMZN) Elastic Compute Cloud (Amazon EC2) and Amazon Simple Storage Service (Amazon S3), core features of Amazon Web Services. Together, they provide an affordable, scalable and fault-tolerant solution to file storage and retrieval in a web environment.

Note: You can become my Yapp friend if you want to test out the service.

Allen: Can you provide a brief background about yourself?

Brendan: We're recent college graduates that have been working in software development for the past couple of years. Brent and I met through our day jobs, since we both work for the same company, which also happens to be a startup as well. Andrew and I have known each other since middle school. He currently also works for a software development shop, except he is based out of Denver, Colorado, and Brent and I are located in Rockville, MD.

Allen: What is Yappd and where did the idea come from?

Brendan: Yappd is a service that allows people to let friends see what they are doing. Not only can you update your status from the web, but you can send a text message, e-mail, or even a picture message from your cell phone. We realized that we had an idea that no other microblogging website had implemented and thought that since it was something we would make extensive use of, others would as well.

Allen: How does the service work?

Brendan: Once you have your account setup, you can start yapping instantly from the web. From there you have the opportunity to setup your phone to be able to send in yapps as either text messages or picture messages. Off the bat, you can send e-mails with yapps containing text or pictures as long as the e-mail you send is from the e-mail that is on your profile. We also give you the ability to watch friends and monitor their yapps, that way your circle of friend's can always be informed on what you're doing or where you are.

Allen: What's the team like at Yappd?

Brendan: Right now, the team only consists of three people, Brendan Lim, Brent Collier, and Andrew Tilt. Brent and I developed most of Yappd, since Andrew hasn't had much time to contribute. The team dynamics though, are great. We knocked out our initial beta in about two weeks, just so we could get something that people could use as soon as possible. That way, we could get feedback on what new features to add in throughout the weeks to come.

Allen: What type of user are you targeting? (age/sex/income/etc.)

Brendan: We don't have much of a barrier for our target-base. As a service that helps people keep in touch, we would love to see a good range of users, from high-school students that want to let their friends know where they are at, to grandparent's that want to visually share things with their family.

Allen: Do you believe that Pownce has an advantage over the other offerings in this segment based on their founder's celebrity-status?

Brendan: It does bring Pownce some extra attention, but beyond that, I believe the market is still open for competition as long as you offer a different set of features. Pownce offers a good set of features, and Yappd is going to get some cool new features in the next few weeks as well.

Allen: Is Yappd a Twitter clone?

Brendan: In terms of what we offer at the moment, you can definitely say that we are, except the fact that we do offer two features that Twitter doesn't. You can visually let friend's know what you're doing or where you are at, and you can search and watch friends, without having to invite them. Our plans were to initially get something up and running as soon as possible with the picture messaging feature, since we knew that this has not been done before. Soon, you'll see a slew of great new features that will definitely set us apart.

Allen: Who are your competitors?

Brendan: We see Twitter and Pownce as the major competitors, since they are really in the forefront of this market.

Allen: If I am already using Twitter, why should I switch?

Brendan: We believe it depends on whether or not they find our features more appealing that Twitter's. I find myself snapping pictures with my camera phone and yapping them to my friend's all the time. It's a feature that I couldn't do without at the moment, since I've gotten so used to it. Again, some of the new features that are in the works are definitely going sway some user's this way. Also, who wouldn't want to hang out with the new kid on the block? :)

Allen: Do you have a monetization plan? If so, can you share some details? Are you funded?

Brendan: With our member base growing and our wide range of demographics, we see advertisements as a source of income, but at the moment, we'd rather keep the design clutter free and uninstrusive for our members. We are not funded at the moment, and we all still have our day jobs.

Allen: Can you share some details about your marketing plan?

Brendan: Right now, we're trying to see how far word of mouth will go. We believe that if a service is good enough, people will tell their friends, because it's what most people do.

Allen: What's coming in the next 3-6 months for Yappd?

Brendan: Many new features will be popping up pretty frequently. We'll be letting you know before it happens, but we can't spill any of the beans just yet.

Allen: In his review, Michael Arrington said, "Here's a me-too service that won't last long." How do you respond to that statement?

Brendan: We can't really be mad at him for what he said, since he is entitled to his opinion. One thing we did notice though, is that he didn't touch our picture messaging, or e-mail feature. Our only reaction after we saw our article was, "Look Ma! We're on TechCrunch".

Allen: What is the Web market like in Maryland? Do you find it's harder to compete with Valley apps?

Brendan: Andrew and I are from Alabama, and Brent is from Virginia, so our exposure to any kind of web startup in our area is virtually non-existant. In Maryland, beyond the startup we are currently working for, we don't know of any other web startups in the area. We do feel that the one advantage with being in the Valley is the ability to network with other individuals or companies that share your same interests.

Allen: What advice do you have for those thinking about starting a web application?

Brendan: I'm pretty much reiterating what Guy Kawasaki said in his book, Art of the Start, when he said that it's easier to jump on an idea that already has a market, since it's easier to gain traction. Beyond that though, it is extremely important to have something that sets you apart from the crowd — something that nobody has done before. Also, get your product out to market as soon as possible, since there's nothing worse than somebody beating you to it.

Allen: Which RSS feeds are you reading these days?

Brendan: Well, there's a variety that we read — first and foremost, we check out all of the latest yapps on Yappd. I, myself, am an Apple fanboy, so The Unofficial Apple Weblog is on my list. Add to that, CenterNetworks, Mashable, TechCrunch, Engadget, Gizmodo, Reddit, Digg, and Uncrate.

Thank you for joining me today Brendan!

Here is what Twitter says Twitter is:

Twitter is a community of friends and strangers from around the world sending updates about moments in their lives.  Friends near or far can use Twitter to remain somewhat close while far away.  Curious people can make friends.  Bloggers can use it as a mini-blogging tool. Developers can use the API to make Twitter tools of their own. Possibilities are endless!

Scoble and his buddies filmed a "What is Twitter" session over lunch. Here is a partial transcript:

Twitter is a microblogging tool where I can only write 140 characters. Each month a few more people I knew joined it. I felt like in November I needed to join it. Your first reaction is that this is really lame. Why would anyone do this. I know a good 40% on my Twitter list. Jeff Pulver says it is adding to the landscape of the web. Amit Shafrir says that he knows everytime that Scoble has a bowel movement. Scoble: Twitter rule #1: don't tell us too much.

When I first came in contact with Twitter at SXSW earlier this year, most people were using Twitter to tell friends where the party was, how much they just barfed, and other random personal information.

Today's Twitter seems very different. I have come down hard on the app before and while I still don't see this as the next coming of (enter figure here), it could create a new marketing point of entry. (side note: I still wish threading was an option!). I have randomly selected a few examples below.

Some use it as a way to tell people precisely what they are doing (I still say no one gives a sh**). This style seems to work for those with "fans":

• fredwilson Late (1pm) breakfast overlooking the black beach in kamari
• noahkagan i love waking up on atish's couch

Some use it as a "release" tool:

• rycaut Pet peeve of restaurants besides bad coffee letting my water glass empty and taking forever for the bill
• factoryjoe ruh roh… Filesystem corruption on my MBP. Not booting! Crap!

And some use it as a business tool:

• mashable FLICKR TOOLBOX: 100 Tools For Flickr Addicts (link)
• UstreamTV Barack Obama LIVE on Ustream.TV – 3pm – Got a Question For Him? Ask Him Yourself From Our Chat!!! (link)
• JasonCalacanis TC20 popping off with demo pit…  (link)

What I find so far is that people who are using in the first way are taking away time from being off-line. This frustrates me. Sometimes it's nice to turn it off. It's harder and harder to do that and now it looks like Twitter is cutting into those few precious minutes as well. In Philadelphia I watched many attendees using Twitter as if it was crack. Can't chat with you and look at you because I may miss that Joe just took a piss and Betty just ran out of mascara. Twitter won't succeed if this route continues.

This is exactly why Pownce is doing so well. Because it came out of the gate as a business networking/utility tool. Twitter is slowly moving in this direction as well. Steve Rubel is packing up part of his blog and moving it to Twitter. Jeremiah is discussing micromedia in general and (i think) he sees this as a powerful medium.

For me I use Twitter as a business relationship and marketing vehicle. When I write something on CN that I think is interesting, I post it on Twitter. I see a few visitors each time (I can only guess that Jason and Robert probably see many more with over 10k Twitter-friends). So from that perspective, I think it works.

Here are two uses for Twitter (or another micromedia tool) that could be huge:

• Tech/business support – first we used message boards for help, then 1-1 instant messaging, now let's use these friend-media tools for support as well. Say you are stuck with a PHP issue, post it on the micromedia tool and have your friends/followers provide assistance.
• Corporate marketing – imagine Pepsi, Walmart or the Gap providing specials, new merchandise announcements, etc. This could be very powerful for marketing. Imagine a Gap group where you could send a message each time you purchase a new item and send a code to a friend who could then scan their phone at the Gap to activate the discount. This has massive potential and I can only guess that the VC firms who funded Twitter last week are thinking the same thing. Rubel says micromedia could "reincarnate the 30 second spot" and he is right. I am guessing he is using/learning Twitter to help his clients at Edelman understand this medium to help sell it in.

So what do you think? What is Twitter to you and where do you see "micromedia" moving in the next year? Will it have mass appeal?

I finally realized the possibilities of using eBay to promote your product so I am very excited to announce that this morning I placed a "Limited Edition Hand Signed Genuine Authentic" CenterNetworks PostCard auction on eBay. Close your eyes and imagine all of the possibilities that are possible when you own your own signed PostCard. Don't be the dork at the next Facebook launch party without one of these PostCards.

Auction price is set to open at $29.98 and I have worked with my shipping partner to keep the shipping at a mere 41cents.

Bid Now!!!

I have watched more people use it as a business tool. Mashable uses it to post tweets of their new posts (I do sometimes as well), Jason Calacanis uses it to pimp his tool, Rafe tests things using Twitter, Marshall posts random interesting findings and Patricia uses it to let us know where the good eateries are in her area.

So what's the number 1 reason I dislike Twitter? The inability to follow a conversation. Here are three examples of what I mean:

In this example, user "trib" is clearly responding to user "purecaffiene" but what was purecaffiene's note to which trib replied? You see, I am not a follower or friend of purecaffiene so I have no idea.

Here is another good example of lack of conversation followthru. Here user "RexDixon" notes to user "marshallk" something about Gmail chat. In this example, I can click "in reply to marshallk" to view the initial status. But there is no threading so if another user was to reply, I would not be able to view it.

Now here is another example of lack of conversation. User "missrogue" is clearly giving some important piece of information to user "dorismith" but what was the initial question? Do I need to play Columbo here?

As you can see from these three examples, Twitter is broken. Maybe it's my history of heavy message board use that makes me believe that Twitter needs a threaded reply system such as Pownce has. Here is a simple example of how easy it is to follow the story on Pownce:

See how easy this is to follow? Leah started a conversation by stating that it's Friday and posted a link. Users "Vincent X" and "Andy H" replied. Andy also could have replied to both Vincent and Leah had he desired.

Besides James' reasons, the lack of threaded discussions makes Twitter basically worthless in my eyes. And naturally if they add it now they will be a Pownce-clone.

Guy Kawasaki – Truemors

Guy was first out of the gate with Truemors and Guy worked his connections to get some initial buzz. Checking Alexa you can see a huge spike on the day of launch. TechMeme shows a dozen or so sites who wrote about the launch including TechCrunch. I assume Guy approached Mike as Mike had an pre-launch post about getting in on the private beta. Compared to the other two below, Guy did the worst job of working his buzz power.

Truemors quickly became a joke across the blogosphere when his system immediately became overrun with spam. He then began to remove mass posts which called the site's credibility into question. The system was hacked in hours making it even more of a joke. In fact, in several conversations I had that first evening, many people I chatted with about Truemors thought it was a joke.

Another thing that I believe hurt Truemors after the initial buzz was Guy's post(s) about the cost to build Truemors. This type of post is great and very useful for other aspiring entrepreneurs but I would have saved it until at least 6-12 months after launch. Then you can demonstrate how great the app is today plus what it took to build. Instead it just came across as a cheaply built app with no QA.

Overall Grade: D+

Jason Calacanis – Mahalo

Jason apparently has the most overall "star power" among the three celebs listed. Jason received lots of press across the Internet when the Mahalo product launched. TechMeme shows a large number of posts led by Jason's TechCrunch20 partner. In addition, he has appeared in no less than 20 interviews including one on Al Jazeera. He was also able to get Kevin Rose to begin a Digg and as we all know any Digg Kevin submits goes front page. What's interesting about this is two of the initial comments on the digg. One comes from powerdigger Muhammad Saleem who states, "Very interesting to see that Kevin Rose would submit Mahalo (of Calacanis, ex-Netscape boss). We all know that Kevin-submitted means 100% FP. Is there something more going on here behind the scenes?" and the other from user BearOwned, "I submitted this first, but the Digg staff deleted it."

Looking at Alexa, Mahalo was a top site on day of launch, and has started to drop since but still appears out of whack. Of course I am a bit skeptical of his "real" ranking after his post last November in which he states how easy it is for him to "game Alexa."

Jason also used his CalacanisCast to bring in some of the "seo-haters" of Mahalo into a discussion. I would give the podcast a neutral rating overall but the generated buzz and links is a significant positive.

Overall I think Jason did an excellent job of working his connections. In addition, by moving the Greenhouse launch out a couple of weeks, this allowed him to get repeat buzz with his friends network. I am looking forward to meeting Jason one day as I think we can both learn something from each other.

Overall Grade: B+

Kevin Rose – Pownce

Kevin has the best tool possible to help Pownce grow. Digg has been Pownce Central since launch. If you search for home page stories about Pownce, there are currently 7 listed. While I want to believe that Pownce gets a special boost on Digg, my video review (the only one out there) was buried.

Kevin has mastered the art of creating "follower" apps. Digg is a follower app by nature and Revision3 also leverages Digg for traffic. Pownce also uses Digg for traffic but now Kevin has a new way to create followers. For example, Kevin posted that he dropped his iPhone on Pownce. Big freaking deal. Within minutes, 28 followers/friends posted replies. Kevin knows that people are interested in following his every move and Pownce gives him a great forum for the minute-by-minute following of his movement. I bet we will see 50-100 of his Pownce comments make the Digg home page within a two-month period.

I also believe Pownce helps Kevin get out of the youngster realm of Digg. So far I see an older, worker-type user on Pownce. I also see more women on Pownce. This is important for longevity and I am sure that Kevin realizes that as the Digg'ers get older, they are not going to be replaced by a new set of Digg'ers.

Interesting side note… Pownce has a Mahalo page. Is this some sort of payback for the Digg? I can't imagine Pownce is already a top 10,000 term. How many other startups which are live for years don't have a page but Pownce gets a page straight away? Is that my bias concern coming into play again?

Overall Grade: B+

Conclusion

Each of the three players used their contacts and their "star power" to light the fire. Now the challenge for each is to keep their startups "top of mind." Will the fire remain lit or will it slowly burn out? If I had to guess on which fire would be extenguished first, it would be Truemors. Of course all three startups have very deep pockets so I doubt any of them will go anytime soon. Here on CenterNetworks, we will focus on tips for the rest of us to succeed. No matter where you are from or if you aren't "known", your startup can be a success!

I wish all three much success with their apps and look forward to reading more about the updates as we move into the summer.