About Pownce

I've just being playing with Pownce, the social networking tool produced by Digg's Kevin Rose (among others), and the not-really-all-that-surprising headline is that it's very much like Twitter. I can't imagine that the additional ability to send a file is going to be enough to convince my Twitter friends to haul ass over to a different platform, and there aren't many other reasons to do so. The desktop application (which uses AIR) is nice though, and seems much more stable than Twitterrific. I just wish Pownce had got to us first.

Anyway, that isn't the point of this post. While I'm not normally in the habit of writing look-what-I've-found" type posts, I was struck by the "About Us" page on Pownce, and particularly the "How's it made" section:

So that's 12 products strung together to create what is, in essence, a very simple messaging site. Remarkable! Surely this is some kind of functional simplicity vs technical complexity record? Regardless, I love the way they're wearing their technical hearts on their sleeves, and this is yet another example of effective transparency (if not the radical kind) being used in the marketplace. I find myself rooting for the human beings behind this service, even if I do face an uphill battle to get my friends on board.