5 ms·

Why Didn’t Pownce Trounce Twitter? – with Leah Culver

22 points by terpua 17y ago

ScottWhigham 17y ago
I tried watching the video but, after 45 seconds of a Basecamp Haystack commercial, I bailed.
- kingkilr 17y ago
  There's no way the ad was more annoying than the interviewer.
alaskamiller 17y ago
I'm split on whether that 1 min pre-roll is effective or not.
- raffi 17y ago
  I skipped past it. I've seen ads before in videos (like http://www.helpmybusiness.com http://www.helpmybusiness.com) but this was too long.
  - alaskamiller 17y ago
    It's more authentic than the usually mass-produced messages, I like that. But, yes, length is an issue.
deleted 17y ago
[deleted]
ajg1977 17y ago
Wasn't Pownce the software where they were using string functions to round floating point numbers? Doesn't sound like the sort of engineering know-how that would lead to a scalable system.
rufo 17y ago
(Warning: personal interpretation ahead.) Didn't watch the video, but she seems to be complaining about the competition. Competition is good. Competition keeps you on your toes and validates your ideas. She can complain all she wants that Pownce wasn't in the same space, but it sure looked like a souped-up Twitter to me and a bunch of other people, and they should've responded to that. And the reality is, Pownce wasn't a worthy competitor to Twitter. Twitter started not by being a closed-in environment, but by trying to reach out to every device, website and service you owned. The API and SMS integration were critical for Twitter to get traction in the early days; everyone on a Mac used Twitteriffic, other web services were coming out all the time that talked to Twitter, and the SMS integration helped people stay connected and get used to the idea of Twitter in their pockets. Pownce launched with a decent looking web app and a poor AIR app, back when AIR was the next big thing. Their v1 API took months to come out, and it only allowed for read-only access - their API didn't get up to snuff until eight months after launch, and by then everyone had lost interest.
- dmpayton 17y ago
  Didn't watch the video, but she seems to be complaining about the competition. You should watch the interview. Or atleast let it play in the background while you do other tasks (like I did). She didn't seem to complain about twitter at all, and expressed that she was surprised about all the Pounce vs. Twitter hype when they launched.
  - jmonegro 17y ago
    Or stream the MP3
  - rufo 17y ago
    I guess I got that sense from this excerpt from the transcript: I really hated that the comparison to Twitter. I think, if I were to do a new start up or a different company, I would pick it in an area where there wasn’t such good competition, determined competition. I think there is definitely different levels of start ups and Twitter was definitely (laughs) a good start up, and it's really hard to compete or be compared to. I don't feel like Twitter was anywhere close to a sure thing at that point - Twitter was having tons of scaling problems, people weren't sure that 140 characters would be enough (files? links? other metadata?) and there were loads of competitors that were looking like likely takeovers. Pownce would've been in the running had they run with it; I distinctly remember looking at Pownce and really liking it, but the desktop client experience was poor and I pretty much ditched it after the first few days.
andrewljohnson 17y ago
I always disappointed when I see mixergy come up on HN. The article titles often look great - interviews, interesting topics, etc. - but I just don't have the attention span to consume talk video. I think a killer start-up might be a mix of video and transcripts... maybe outsource the transcriptions since the technology isn't there yet. Then again, I might read a transcription even if it was garbled like Google Voice messages.
- brandnewlow 17y ago
  He hasn't figured out a format that everyone loves.... ....but who else is doing what he's doing: Longform interviews with people who made stuff a lot of us know about? Has anyone produced a better interview with ojbyrne? kn0thing? Not that I've seen anywhere. For all the (valid) griping about how articles are presented on HN, I'd think someone like Andrew trying to create a new, "ultimate" format for presenting a longform interview would be welcomed.
  - weaksauce 17y ago
    Is that not why he sends out the information in multiple ways? I count four right now: video, audio, full transcript, and a key points overview. What other ways to present a long interview are there? Are you looking for every question indexed and clickable as a link that seeks to the question in the video? That might be cool for a second viewing when you are looking for a particular answer to a question but for overall watching I think his site is pretty flexible. Note: This is not a criticism of your comment... more a call for clarification.
    - andrewljohnson 17y ago
      Hey, both of you in this thread... thanks for the info. Now that I know about the transcripts, I have a lot of reading to do :)
    - brandnewlow 17y ago
      I'm not looking for anything. I think Mixergy is terrific and was sticking up for the interviews against what I thought was unfair criticism.

22 points by terpua 17y ago

ScottWhigham 17y ago

I tried watching the video but, after 45 seconds of a Basecamp Haystack commercial, I bailed.

kingkilr 17y ago
There's no way the ad was more annoying than the interviewer.

alaskamiller 17y ago

I'm split on whether that 1 min pre-roll is effective or not.

raffi 17y ago
I skipped past it. I've seen ads before in videos (like http://www.helpmybusiness.com http://www.helpmybusiness.com) but this was too long.
- alaskamiller 17y ago
  It's more authentic than the usually mass-produced messages, I like that. But, yes, length is an issue.

deleted 17y ago

[deleted]

ajg1977 17y ago

Wasn't Pownce the software where they were using string functions to round floating point numbers? Doesn't sound like the sort of engineering know-how that would lead to a scalable system.

rufo 17y ago

(Warning: personal interpretation ahead.) Didn't watch the video, but she seems to be complaining about the competition. Competition is good. Competition keeps you on your toes and validates your ideas. She can complain all she wants that Pownce wasn't in the same space, but it sure looked like a souped-up Twitter to me and a bunch of other people, and they should've responded to that. And the reality is, Pownce wasn't a worthy competitor to Twitter. Twitter started not by being a closed-in environment, but by trying to reach out to every device, website and service you owned. The API and SMS integration were critical for Twitter to get traction in the early days; everyone on a Mac used Twitteriffic, other web services were coming out all the time that talked to Twitter, and the SMS integration helped people stay connected and get used to the idea of Twitter in their pockets. Pownce launched with a decent looking web app and a poor AIR app, back when AIR was the next big thing. Their v1 API took months to come out, and it only allowed for read-only access - their API didn't get up to snuff until eight months after launch, and by then everyone had lost interest.

dmpayton 17y ago
Didn't watch the video, but she seems to be complaining about the competition. You should watch the interview. Or atleast let it play in the background while you do other tasks (like I did). She didn't seem to complain about twitter at all, and expressed that she was surprised about all the Pounce vs. Twitter hype when they launched.
- jmonegro 17y ago
  Or stream the MP3
- rufo 17y ago
  I guess I got that sense from this excerpt from the transcript: I really hated that the comparison to Twitter. I think, if I were to do a new start up or a different company, I would pick it in an area where there wasn’t such good competition, determined competition. I think there is definitely different levels of start ups and Twitter was definitely (laughs) a good start up, and it's really hard to compete or be compared to. I don't feel like Twitter was anywhere close to a sure thing at that point - Twitter was having tons of scaling problems, people weren't sure that 140 characters would be enough (files? links? other metadata?) and there were loads of competitors that were looking like likely takeovers. Pownce would've been in the running had they run with it; I distinctly remember looking at Pownce and really liking it, but the desktop client experience was poor and I pretty much ditched it after the first few days.

andrewljohnson 17y ago

I always disappointed when I see mixergy come up on HN. The article titles often look great - interviews, interesting topics, etc. - but I just don't have the attention span to consume talk video. I think a killer start-up might be a mix of video and transcripts... maybe outsource the transcriptions since the technology isn't there yet. Then again, I might read a transcription even if it was garbled like Google Voice messages.

brandnewlow 17y ago
He hasn't figured out a format that everyone loves.... ....but who else is doing what he's doing: Longform interviews with people who made stuff a lot of us know about? Has anyone produced a better interview with ojbyrne? kn0thing? Not that I've seen anywhere. For all the (valid) griping about how articles are presented on HN, I'd think someone like Andrew trying to create a new, "ultimate" format for presenting a longform interview would be welcomed.
- weaksauce 17y ago
  Is that not why he sends out the information in multiple ways? I count four right now: video, audio, full transcript, and a key points overview. What other ways to present a long interview are there? Are you looking for every question indexed and clickable as a link that seeks to the question in the video? That might be cool for a second viewing when you are looking for a particular answer to a question but for overall watching I think his site is pretty flexible. Note: This is not a criticism of your comment... more a call for clarification.
  - andrewljohnson 17y ago
    Hey, both of you in this thread... thanks for the info. Now that I know about the transcripts, I have a lot of reading to do :)
  - brandnewlow 17y ago
    I'm not looking for anything. I think Mixergy is terrific and was sticking up for the interviews against what I thought was unfair criticism.