UPDATE: A few more thoughts added in.

I’ll have a more com­pre­hen­sive func­tion­al­ity review up on Web Worker Daily in the next day or so, but I wanted to get some thoughts into the mix over the obvi­ous Twit­ter vs. Pownce comparisons.

Over at I, Plat­form, Eric Rice looks to have decided that it’s a Twitter-​​killer, espe­cially given Twitter’s slug­gish release cycle and recent sta­bil­ity issues. So has Stan Schroeder at FranticIndusties.

I’m not con­vinced. Sure, Pownce offers some addi­tional fea­tures over Twit­ter, but it feels under­done to me — almost as if the Megat­e­chtro­n­ium folks decided that it was feature-​​complete enough to release into the wild and did so. Fair call — it’s a good app and ready for pub­lic test­ing from what I can see. Release early-​​release often, I say!

It also feels a lit­tle crowded with func­tion­al­ity to me, as if the team couldn’t say no to the ideas they came up with. Maybe they should have (re)read Get­ting Real before they started.

That said, there are some key fea­tures miss­ing — in par­tic­u­lar an open API and feeds are crit­i­cal for Web 2.0 apps these days and they’re notice­ably absent in Pownce.

As for the ads, so far they’re small and unob­tru­sive (I’ve only seen one, for Zooomr. I didn’t click.). I just don’t see peo­ple going for the Pro model, so there’s no ticket-​​clip hap­pen­ing there. Unless the ads are super com­pelling (is that pos­si­ble?). I just don’t see the need to pay $20 to avoid ads. Also, I’m not going to send files to peo­ple via an IM/​web tool, 100Mb capac­ity or not. It’s too slow.

A more “let’s be friends” view is offered by Pix­el­spread. At the moment, I’m more in this camp. I’m deeply invested per­son­ally in terms of con­tacts at Twit­ter and don’t rel­ish the rebuild­ing I’d need to do if I jumped ship.

Also, Twit­ter has been a world more sta­ble (at least for me) the past cou­ple of weeks. I haven’t noticed any sig­nif­i­cant dead spots. YMMV.

If there was no Twit­ter, Pownce would be a com­pelling choice. But Twit­ter is there, and it has estab­lished a place in the market.

Ulti­mately, I really don’t see a need to choose between the two. Twit­ter is about those quick mes­sages and Pownce seems tar­geted a lit­tle higher — some­where between Twit­ter and lifestream blog­ging. There’s almost cer­tainly a use­ful sweet spot there. I plan to per­sist with both and see where my trav­els take me. At the moment, I’m actu­ally inclined to stick with Twit­ter for most of the sort of mes­sag­ing both Pownce and Twit­ter do.

What are your thoughts? Twit­ter or Pownce? And is there as sweet spot in your social com­put­ing where both are useful?