File Sharing and Instant Messaging with Pownce

Most of you have probably read somewhere already that Kevin Rose has a new startup called Pownce which was launched on Wednesday. It is the first product of the company Megatechtronium; other people involved with the company are Leah Culver, Shawn Allen, and Daniel Burka. Currently it is invite-only, so if you want to test it yourself get in touch, please. I have six invitations.

Ok, so what is Pownce about? I would say it is an instant messenger which lets you send files (up to 10 MB), links, events, and of course messages to your friends. Messages (can be replied to, forwarded, and starred; also threaded view of conversation), events (RSVP options available when responding), and links can be sent either to just one friend, all of your friends or even to the public. Files can be sent to your friend(s) only, though. Considering that the application was launched just a couple of days ago everything works smoothly which is really surprising. Pownce also offers a pro version ($20/yr) which lets you send files up to 100 MB and it won’t feature any advertisement.

There is also a desktop application available (see image on the left) which utilises Adobe’s Integrated Runtime (AIR) which many will remember as Apollo. It automatically syncs with the online app. Pretty cool. If you still run the alpha of Apollo make sure that you uninstall it first and download the AIR version. I didn’t do that and got an error message. Though if I read the troubleshooting instructions below the download instructions this could have been prevented. D’oh!

Pownce is not really a breath taking application but it runs smoothly already and it is actually really cool. There are some more applications like Pibb (covered here) which also aim at instant messaging giving it a new twist. Considering the success of Twitter maybe people don’t want big apps anymore but rather small ones that just do one thing properly. Anyway, I like Pownce.