Twitter vs. Pownce
So, back to Nik's point that Twitter is better because of the API. — Absolutely correct. But when we were standing in line last week for our iPhones Pownce's lead developer, Leah Culver joined us and we talked at length about where Pownce is going.
Context & Ripple Effects
Pownce arrived only days ago — splash page and email invites went up in late June — with its success pinned on founder credibility and referral traffic from Digg, while Evan Williams' Twitter entered July freshly venture-funded. The framing battle is already underway: commentary this week has Twitter losing on feature velocity, with upgrades landing at Jaiku, Facebook, and Pownce instead, even as TechCrunch casts the fight as Kevin versus Evan.
Robert Scoble's answer cuts the other way: he concedes rivals ship faster but argues Twitter is better because of its API, making third-party developers — not feature checklists — the real battleground. Notably, the post traveled well beyond the platform-watcher crowd: the same week it was picked up by A-list-critique blogs like gapingvoid, rexblog, Deep Jive Interests, and Newsome.Org, folding the Twitter-Pownce matchup into a broader argument about whether elite bloggers still gatekeep which startups win.
First-order effects
- Leah Culver's long conversation with Scoble in an iPhone line shows Pownce courting exactly the influencer-coverage channel its Digg-linked launch strategy depends on — while it remains invite-only and before any public product review.
- Twitter's advantage in this framing is its head start on the developer channel: Pownce must decide whether to match the API play or concede the ecosystem while it courts early users.
Second-order effects
- Jaiku and Facebook are absorbing the feature upgrades Twitter's slow development cycle leaves unshipped, so Pownce's differentiation cannot rest on features alone — pushing both new entrants toward opening their own platforms to developers.
- A-list bloggers acting as kingmakers (the frame the syndicated pickups argue about) become a distribution variable in the rivalry itself: whoever they bless gains referring traffic neither service can buy.
Third-order effects
- If the pattern holds, microblogging platforms will be decided by who owns the developer control plane rather than by consumer feature races — an ecosystem moat that compounds even when the incumbent ships slowly.
The trend: Consumer messaging platforms are shifting from feature competition to ecosystem competition, where the openness of the developer API decides the winner.