Is Pownce emerging as the new Twitter?

There must be something in the air (pun not intended!) or it is that time of year again. SXSW is coming up in two weeks and I wonder if any particular service will emerge from SXSW as the Twitter of 2008? You may remember that Twitter rocketed in popularity during and after the 2007 SXSW and has been cruising since then. Unfortunately Twitter has also been plagued by a series of outages to the point where it is no longer news that Twitter is down anymore. That isn’t great news for Twitter and it must be really frustrating for the Twitter people that the service isn’t coping with the phenomenal demand.

It was probably only a matter of time before talk returns to Twitter alternatives like Pownce (although people who I have read who are talking about Pownce and Twitter are talking about each as having their place in the ecoystem rather than Pownce being a Twitter killer). There is a little buzz at the moment about Dave Winer’s post raving about the updated Pownce API.

Sorry Ev and Biz and Jack, but they got your number over there at Pownce.

I’ve been asking Twitter to support payloads for months now, and now I have what I was asking for, but it came from Pownce, and it’s beautifully implemented, far more than what I was asking Twitter for.

…

Twitter was my first love, but now I’m seriously considering a fling with Pownce.

Leo Laporte chatted to Winer on This Week in Tech 134 (looking forward to that one) and I am sure there will be even more about this in the coming days. What I am wondering is whether Pownce is going to suddenly pick up loads of users in the coming weeks due, in part, to frustration with Twitter going down so often. While Pownce and Twitter are intended for different things, you can use Pownce for status updates and IRC-style chats that people use Twitter for. There is even a mobile client for Pownce in addition to the AIR app. I am not saying Pownce is going to overtake Twitter and become the new black. I just think it will be really interesting to see what happens next.

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