Twitter

It seems like with the launch of Pownce that it is going to be some sort of battle between it and Twitter. However, I think that the two systems are quite complimentary. Twitter aims to be a multiplatform messaging system. Pownce aims to be a multipurpose sharing system.

Twitter sends small text bursts to an user’s network of friends across the web into as many formats as needed: desktop, texts, instant messenger, etc. Perhaps in the future, Twitter will expand into text-to-speech (to leave voice mail) or even just plain email alerts. But the point is that it aims to be a one-input-to-many-outputs texting system. Twitter launched without a special application because SMS was Twitter’s special application. Sharing location and ideas are perfect for this. Sending structured data, like links and threaded replies, is awkward but possible. Sending things only to specific groups of a user’s network, not at all.

Pownce, on the other hand fills this void. It is designed to take binary data (like files) or structured data (like events) and share them with specific friends or groups easily. Public sharing is enabled simply because it is possible, and attracts new users. But rich data must be sent to systems that can read it. There’s no good reason to send a 100MB file to a mobile — yet — which is why the computer desktop is the focus for now. It is also designed to circumvent restrictions of other networks, like in the case of file sharing, which is why a desktop client is such an integral and promoted component of the site.

Notice the subtle differences yet? Twitter aims to supplement existing messaging technologies, while Pownce aims to supplant them. Twitter will happily integrate into your Google Talk account and route your messages into your instant messenger. Pownce wants you to skip the instant messenger entirely. On Twitter, I am either public or private, period — and when I am public, the world has access all the time… it is an electronic megaphone blasting out in all forms (just check out Twittervision!). On Pownce, I have no explicit state because it all depends on how I chose to send things on a post-by-post basis. My privacy is dependent on what and how I wish to share items. I don’t broadcast, I conditionally publish. My material is hosted. In this sense, I see Pownce vs. Tumblr as the real point of conflict, not Pownce vs. Twitter.

In the end, I see both companies going in different, but complimentary directions. Sure, you can share text on Pownce but you can’t get that Pownce as an SMS. And you can share a link on Twitter but you can’t get a file, either. It’s all in how you choose to share yourself the most. What I am doing and what I want you to see are, in fact, different things and they will continue to be surfaced in different ways by these services.

Last time I showed Twitter around, I got asked how they make money. It’s a good question, because as it stands now, I can’t see how they can. The reason why it’s catching on like wildfire is because it is so simple and so open. No cost of entry. Text subscriptions that go everywhere and (seemingly) anywhere. Which is why we see companies that blog (Veer, Adaptive Path, etc.) popping up there just as much as we see application updates (Twitterrific, etc.) becoming “users” of the site. There’s no paid path into this functionality required to take advantage of it.

The problem for real business use, however, is that public on Twitter is the public Internet. While you can be private, it still means you can add people other than co-workers into your circle, ruining the privacy. The way to make it useful for companies is to make that state of being private be within an intranet instead. There’s two distinct ways I could see that happening.

The first would be to make Twitter an internally deployable platform. It’s unlikely, because given the history and current growth of Twitter, I believe Twitter is made up of a lot of custom and open code spread across a network of systems. The magic of Twitter is that its growing in a human-like fashion — there’s an electronic body being grown an organ at a time, and it keeps picking up skills as you show it new ones. It’s very much alive. There’s no way to reproduce that as a “single package” for a business to install.

The second is more realistic, and similar to current web 2.0 offerings: offer a subscription for a secure custom domain (third-level or other). Establish admins who are given configuration access to all users. Phone numbers, IM handles, etc. can be whitelisted so they match official records. Things of that nature. More importantly, Twitter needs a true mobile app, like Jaiku’s, that integrates status with the phone’s Contacts list and can easily manage the modality that would arise from having a public Twitter and multiple private Twitters.

Even so, this experience is too new for business. Would they know how to use it? Hell, most are still uncomfortable finding a place for instant messenger. How would they react to an IT-supplied phone with a mobile app that auto-updates phone on/off status? Or even their position on campus using mobile GPS? Badly, I would imagine. The majority would scream invasion of privacy. But for those willing, it could become a huge benefit for staying in touch and up-to-date.

Even so, just the existence of such a private Twitter could fracture the activity on the public site if individuals began signing up for it. What if your friend set up a private space? How would you reconcile being on his list there while trying to still update for friends on the public site?

Ultimately, you end up with an explosion of SMS short codes that you need to text to and that excess of modality would kill the experience. The beauty of the system is that it is simple. The challenge of the system is that it is simple.

Too simple, perhaps, to make any money in the business world.