The Death of Pownce:

On December 1, 2008, Pownce notified it's members that it was closing on December 15th. The party was over.

For those of you who've been so busy Twittering that you haven't had time to Pownce, Pownce is/was a social networking service. Pownce only began earlier this year, but it had managed to garner a small yet deeply disturbed (in the best sense) following.

This notification came by a notice posted on the site. The members each later received an email which stated, as you can imagine, the right things about how blah blah, it's been so nice to be with you, blah blah. Actually, there weren't all that many blahs. The goodbye was quick and to the point.

"We're bittersweet about shutting down the service but we believe we'll come back with something much better in 2009. We love the Pownce community and we will miss you all."

Uh huh. Right.

Ms. Culver, the author of this blog entry, then went on to describe that she and some of the other Pownce members shared the vision of Six Apart which is the sunset into which she and these other Pownce founders were planning to scamper.

One must question, why does Ms. Culver think any of us care about their vision? They are dumping us. Why should we care that they are going to skip off into the happily ever after land?

I suppose we should be happy for the Pownce folk. After all, they are going to work for Six Apart, a company which claims on their web site to make "the best blogging tools on the market." I'm sure it must be true. Just ask them.

I will say this for the quick exiting Powncers - they are at least trying to quickly clean up their mess before they dash off into the sunset. They have made some provision for those folks who want to download their conversations. There will also be some sort of provisions also made for those individuals who also went "Pownce -Pro" although thus far it seems all they are being offered is a TypePad account for a year. That's right. Give someone something they don't want when the thing they signed up for cuts and runs on you. No political jokes intended.

The real irony in all this is that on November 11th Six Apart announced it would lay off 8% of it's staff. So these Powncers better make good, and by that I mean better than what they did with Pownce, or they each might find themselves cleaning out their desk yet again.