We have some very big news today at Pownce. We will be closing the service and Mike and I, along with the Pownce technology, have joined Six Apart, the company behind such great blogging software as Movable Type, TypePad and Vox. 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.

We’re very happy that Six Apart wants to invest in growing the vision that we the founders of Pownce believe so strongly in and we’re very excited to take our vision to all of Six Apart’s products. Mike and I have joined Six Apart as part of their engineering team and we’re looking forward to being a part of the talented group that has created amazing tools for blogging and publishing.

We’ll be closing down the main Pownce website two weeks from today, December 15th. Since we’d like for you to have access to all your Pownce messages, we’ve added an export function. Visit pownce.com/settings/export/ to generate your export file. You can then import your posts to other blogging services such as Vox, TypePad, or WordPress.

For our Pro members, we’ll be emailing you soon with more information about your Pro account.

As for the Pownce team, we’ll continue posting on Vox. You can find me at leahculver.vox.com, Mike at mjmalone.vox.com, and Ariel at arielwaldman.vox.com. The Six Apart announcement can be found on their company blog.

We really appreciate your continued support and understanding. Thanks so much for being part of the Pownce community.

The Pownce site has been acting a little wonky this weekend. One of our databases was not keeping up to date, resulting in displaying old notes instead of your most recent ones.

Don’t worry, no posts or replies were lost!

We’re working on fixing the issue now. Thanks for letting us know about the problem and for your patience and support.

Oh noes! We’ve had some issues this morning. Our slave database was corrupted and we’re currently running on one database while we restore from backup. You might see some error messages and slowness but the site should be fine shortly. Thanks so much for your patience and understanding.

Update: Today is not our lucky day. Our backup database is also having some issues, so the site will be down while we recover.

Photo by unclebumpy on Flickr

My favorite Halloween tradition is pumpkin carving. This year I was inspired to make a Pownce-themed pumpkin!

More photos on Flickr.

I hope you all have a safe and fun Halloween!

This may be the craziest application built for Pownce yet - a robot that pours beer when sent a Pownce message!

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With a quick post from your iPhone, the robot pours a nice cold beer. Matt Reid created this Lego Mindstorms robot for Barcamp Nashville. I want one.

Mozilla labs has a new Firefox extension, Geode, that will fetch your location when you visit certain websites. We’ve partnered with the Mozilla folks so that you can use Geode to update your Pownce location. It’s fairly simple once you’ve got the plug-in installed and your Fire Eagle account linked with Pownce.

Here’s what you’ll need to do:

1. Connect your Pownce account with Fire Eagle if you have not done so already.
2. Download and install the latest Mozilla Firefox web browser.
3. Read Mozilla’s blog post and download and install Geode.
4. Restart Firefox.
5. Visit your Pownce homepage. You should see an “update” button next to your Fire Eagle location.

   

6. Click “update” and grant Pownce access to your location.

   

Done! Your new location should appear in your profile and on each new note you send.

You can also update your location via the Fire Eagle settings page. If you have Geode installed, you’ll be asked if you’d like to update your location using Firefox. After you allow Pownce access to your location, the location field should display your coordinates and when you click “update”, we’ll find you based on those coordinates.

At Pownce we’re working very hard to make it easier to update your location and tell you’re friends where you’re at. It’s super fun to see where your friends are and where they’re posting notes from. It’s just one more way that Pownce helps keep you connected.

Pownce is now running on (the very new!) Django 1.0. You probably won’t notice any difference, but if you see something fishy please let us know. Sorry for the down time today and thanks to Malcolm for helping us upgrade!

Yay! Django 1.0 is here. Pownce is one of the largest websites built with the Django framework and soon we’ll be running 1.0.

In the meantime, Djangocon is going on this weekend in Mountain View, CA. I’ll be speaking on the Django Success Stories panel and Mike and I will be there with free Pownce buttons and stickers! Can’t make it? You can still get stickers and buttons via a SASE.

Also, if you’re itching to build your own Django site, our friends over at MediaTemple just launched their Django GridContainer service for cheap and reliable Django project hosting.

Congratulations to the Django team!

Tell your friends your location by updating Pownce via Fire Eagle – the new service from Yahoo! that lets you keep your location information in one handy place. Once you’ve set your location on Fire Eagle, all of your Pownce photos, links, songs, events, and messages will then be geo-tagged with your current location. Your friends will be able see what you sent and where you sent it from.

All you need to get started is a Fire Eagle account, which takes about 30 seconds if you already have a Yahoo! ID. Login to Pownce and visit pownce.com/settings/fireeagle/ to get started.

Congratulations to the Fire Eagle team on their recent launch. A number of us Powncers will be at the launch party Thursday night in San Francisco… it’d be great to see you there!

Photo by Cayce!

Since we opened our API, developers have been creating cool new ways to utilize Pownce. A few new ones you may want to check out:

Bownce
Interested in seeing who has replied to notes after you and what they are saying? Bownce helps gather your replies in a convient page. It is designed to enhance the experience of keeping up with notes on Pownce. (Bownce also has OAuth implemented!).

FirePownce & Fownce
Two different Firefox plugins that allow you to easily post notes to Pownce. FirePownce can send messages, links, files and events to Pownce through auto-submission via the website. Fownce interfaces with Firefox to post messages and links to Pownce without having to go to the Pownce site. Both are great!

PownceWar
PownceWar tracks the popularity of users on Pownce with a featured list of the top 100, sorted by gender, country, active or all.

Shareaholic Pownce integration
Shareaholic makes it easy for you to submit the web page you’re on to your favorite sharing or bookmarking service.  You also have the option to e-mail the web page directly to a friend. Check it out at https://addons.mozilla.org/en-<wbr></wbr>US/firefox/addon/5457

Pownce now supports UTF-8, which means you can now post Pownce notes in just about any language! We already have Powncers in 219 countries (China, Germany, France and Brazil among the largest percentage of non-English speaking so far).  We’re really excited and eager to see the global community grow even more. Be sure to check out the public notes page to see what people are posting on Pownce from across the world!

We’ve got a massive upgrade to our desktop software! The new application has been rebuilt from scratch and has a ton of new features that you’ve already seen on the website as well as a couple that we’re trying out for the first time. Download the new application and you’ll get:

• Embedded media. Images, videos, audio files, and now Digg stories will appear inline!
• Pagination. See lots of notes going back in time.
• Favorite notes! Want to bookmark a note for later reference? No problem, just click the heart icon.
• Manage friends. See your friends and manage friend requests. This even has a friend search!
• Notification alerts. Get notified of new notes with audio alerts.
• Simpler Interface. The new UI is more native and generally more clean and simple.

Jon Rohan, a member of the Pownce community, began development of an alternative application, called PownceMonkey several months ago and we loved it. We approached Jon and asked him to collaborate on the next version of the Pownce app with us and thankfully he agreed! Jon rocks and we’re extremely pleased with how this version has turned out.

As you’ll notice, the application is currently in ‘Alpha’, which means we know there are some bugs in it that need to be worked out and we’d appreciate your help identifying and fixing those. We also have more functionality that we want to build into the app, but we figured this was a good time to send the software out into the real world and get your feedback to help developing it further.

If you haven’t used the Pownce desktop application before, the big advantage is that you’ll automatically know when new stuff gets posted to you and you can respond right away. This means you can have more real-time communication around the stuff you’re sharing with your friends.

Download it today!

We’re very excited to announce the new official Pownce iPhone/iPod Touch app. It’s available for download soon from the iTunes Application Store.

The Pownce iPhone/iPod touch app lets you get all the latest notes from your friends right away on your mobile device. You can also send messages, links, events and photos.

My favorite thing about the iPhone version is that you can instantly take a photo from your phone and send it to all your friends!

Pownce developer Mike Malone has been working on this application for awhile now and its great to be able to share it with the Pownce community. Go ahead and download it today and start sending stuff to your friends!

PostRank is an engagement-ranking system that looks at any kind of online content, from blog posts to news stories, and has today announced integration with Pownce! Listed as a data source, Pownce will serve as a form of measuring the types and frequency of an audience’s interaction with online content for PostRank to analyze. This information is pulled from our open API.

To view more examples of how people are using the Pownce API, visit our featured apps page.

We’re very excited about our own Leah Culver being featured on the cover of the July/August issue of Technology Review! Published by MIT, the article reviews the Ten Web Startups to Watch, listing Pownce as one of the top ten up-and-comers. Also, check out what Leah and technology innovators had to say about the future of the web. Congrats, Leah!

Previously: Veronica Belmont gives Pownce the thumbs-up in her list of top 10 up-and-coming web apps.

There was an error in a Pownce code release last night which caused notes to show up as sent by someone that they were not. The mistake has been fixed now, but may still affect 3rd party applications that rely on the Pownce API or feeds for displaying notes sent by a particular user. We’re terribly sorry about the mistake and all the confusion it caused.

Holy crap, you guys rock. We asked for images that somehow incorporated the Pownce logo and we got a ton of kick ass entries. Check out a lot of them below.

We were originally only going to have one winner, but in the end we thought three would be even better. Powncers FierceDeityLink1, lfcfan, and Cwluc take home the gold! Er, I mean they won either a free pro account or a tshirt… their call. The winning entries are outlined in red in the gallery below.

Thanks again to Oliver Cross for coming up with the idea for the contest and for performing as a guest judge along with the Pownce crew. I’m sure we’ll do more contests in the nearish future. Thanks again to all of the entrants… amazing stuff!

We’re running a new contest on Pownce – take photos that somehow incorporate the Pownce logo or website. Get all of the details and enter the contest at this Pownce note. Thanks to Oliver Cross for coming up with the idea. He’ll be helping us judge the contest next week.

As some of you know, we’ve also been experiencing some performance problems on the website over this past week. The issues have been especially affecting our most prolific (aka awesome) Powncers. Rest assured, we’re keenly aware of how frustrating this is. We’ve heard from you very clearly and these performance issues also affect our accounts. There are some short term fixes we’re working on, but to get the site performing as well as we would like will also take some changes that will take longer to complete. Performance is a high priority for us and we want you to know that we’re focusing on these issues.

Thanks for your patience and good luck in the contest!

(photo from our public launch party by chasingfun)

Join the Pownce team for our first birthday since our launch! We’ve had an exciting year and we want to celebrate it with all our friends

To RSVP to get in, you *must* post a reply to http://pownce.com/ariel/notes/2287243/

We’ll be providing beer, but feel free to BYOB if you’re pickier than us.
This event is 21+.

We can’t wait to see all of you there!

Tonight we launched the new feature of sharing files to the public. You can now share your personal files with your friends, fans, and the Pownce community at large.

We also provided more control over who can download audio files that you share with the public. You can access these new settings by going to your settings when logged in to your account.

In addition, we’re happy to announce that we’ve increased the base file size limit for all Powncers from 10MB to 100MB! We greatly appreciate the support we’ve received from our Pro members, so we’re also increasing the file size limit to 250MB for free for all the Pros. We’re really excited about these new features and hope you are too!

Hello Django fans!

If you like to hack in Python and Django, be sure to check out the Django Dash competition. Build the best web app you can (using Django of course) in only 48 hours. The competition runs from Saturday, May 31 to Sunday, June 1 and registration begins today!

Want more Pownce? In addition to the Pownce website, we have an official desktop application and a site for your mobile phone. There are also a bunch of fan-created applications that rock our socks off. Check them out at http://pownce.com/tools/

Here are some of my personal favorites:

PownceAIM

An AIM bot that pings you with your Pownce messages and allows for you to quickly post to Pownce via your instant messaging client. Just send an IM to “pownceaim” (on AIM) to get started.

PownceMonkey

PownceMonkey is a desktop application that displays all your latest Pownce messages and allows you to post to Pownce. You can also sort by note type, play audio files, view thumbnail images, and match your Pownce theme.

PownceMeme

Want to know what other Powncers are doing? Want to see the most popular stuff on Pownce? Check out PownceMeme for the latest hot stuff from the Pownce community.

rePownce

rePownce is a well-designed Facebook application that adds your Pownce notes to your Facebook feed. Let all your friends on Facebook know what you’re sending on Pownce!

Blog It!

Another Facebook application, created by the blog company SixApart, Blog It! lets you send blog posts and status updates to several social networks at once. You can write a quick update and send it to Facebook, Pownce, and Twitter.

Speaking of posting to multiple sites, there are also several websites that let you view and post to many social networks at once, including Pownce. Check out SocialThing!, Mahalo Follow, HelloTxt, Ping.fm, TwitKu, Twhirl, and FriendFeed. If you have a personal website, you can also also show your support for Pownce by adding a Pownce badge or Pownce It! button. Hope you have fun sharing stuff on Pownce!

There have been a few weird bugs today on the site and few inconsistencies in general the last few days. Rest assured, our wee team is looking into it and we’ll get everything back on an even keel as soon as we can. Just wanted to let you all know that we’re on the chase. Thanks for the helpful bug reports people have sent in. We love you guys. Cheers.

The four may not seem to go so well together at first glance, but they all blended beautifully at our last Pownce Brunch Meetup in Los Angeles. We joined forces with the awesome folks at Blogging.la and The Groop for the gathering at the Farmer’s Market. Check out photos from the meetup here.

Leah and I are back in San Francisco now and are definitely missing the hot and sunny streets of LA already!

Also, if you hadn’t seen photos from our brunch meetup at SXSW, view them here. We had such a great turn out of truly great people! (We’re also happy that the restaurant didn’t hate us for having over 60 people show up when we only made a reservation for 20!).

To keep updated on future Pownce Brunch Meetups or to organize your own, visit our community wiki.

Hello from Austin!
Most of the Pownce crew is gearing up for SXSW 2008. We’ve got a lot going on for the event, both online and offline:

Pownce on panels
Leah Culver - What Women Need to Succeed & Building Developer-Friendly Web Service APIs
Daniel Burka - Social Design Strategies
Kevin Rose - Considerations for Scalable Web Ventures
Ariel Waldman - How to Rawk SXSW: Achieving Geekgasm

16bit Pownce Party
Saturday, March 8 - 10pm-2am
RSVP here

Pownce Brunch Meetup in Austin
Sunday, March 9 @ 12pm
Moonshine Grill - 303 Red River Street

SXSW on Pownce
Add http://pownce.com/sxsw as a friend to receive messages, links, music, events and more from SXSW2008! Send a private message to suggest your own live-blogging, photos, etc. for the account to share with everyone.

Track all SXSW messages, links, files and events on Pownce
See who is saying what about SXSW at http://sxsw.pownce.com

We wanted an easy way to see all the public notes about SXSW on Pownce, so we reached out to our awesome PownceAPI community to create a solution. We received some great projects over the last few days - check them out:

http://www.slenderbox.com/sxsw.php by Augie
http://powncespy.com/sxsw/ by Jeff Hodson
http://www.dinnermint.org/sxsw/ by Jon Rohan
http://www.lesquat.net/pownce/puaw/ by Rémi
http://www.heychinaski.com/pownce-sxsw by Tom Martin

While it was a tough decision, we had to choose one to promote at SXSW. We chose Heychinaski.com/pownce-sxsw because we really enjoyed the ease of use, as well as the ability to view it from our mobile devices. Congrats, Tom!

View the official Pownce + SXSW site created by Tom at: http://sxsw.pownce.com

Thanks to everyone who came out for our first Pownce Brunch in Miami! It was great getting to know all of you in person.

Here’s the Powncers being all Powncey:

Photos by Joseph Smarr.

Upcoming Pownce Brunches include Austin, Los Angeles, and Amsterdam. Feel free to organize your own Pownce meetup as well. There’s already one in Milwaukee! Mmm… brunch.

Hey developers! We’re proud to announce that Pownce now has a complete API for you to create awesome projects, mashups, and hacks.

What’s new in v2.0?

The biggest improvement is the ability to post notes. You can post messages, links, files, events and even replies via the API. Another big improvement is the ability to fetch lists of private and friends-only notes. Both these new features require a user to be logged in to Pownce and the API provides 2 ways to do this: HTTP basic authentication and OAuth, a new open standard for token-based web authentication.

In addition to new API features, we’ve also added an application directory for developers to show off their work and for users to find new tools for using Pownce. Check it out: http://pownce.com/tools/

We’re sorry it took so long for us to release a complete API. We’ve taken great care to provide the best experience for developers and we hope the wait was worth it. Going forward, we’ll be working hard to keep Pownce the best social messaging application out there.

Thanks to our developer community and our helpful API alpha testers. Keep the feature requests and feedback coming. You all rock.

Documentation for Pownce API v2.0 can be found here: http://pownce.pbwiki.com/API+Documentation2-0

Happy hacking.

Bring your laptops, iPhones, Blackberries and appetites and join the Pownce team for brunch!

Where to find us in March:

FOWA Brunch - Miami, FL
Noon on Saturday, March 1
@ GreenStreet Cafe

SXSW Brunch - Austin, TX
Noon on Monday, March 10
@ Moonshine Grill

Brunch + Beer with Pownce, Blogging.la & The Groop - Los Angeles, CA
Noon on Saturday, March 22
@ Farmer’s Market (we’ll aim for table space between Lottera and Starbucks)

For more up-to-the-date details and future Pownce Brunch Meetups, check the Pownce community wiki.

(photo: Tantek Çelik)

We’ve updated the list of upcoming events over on the right side of the blog. Leah, Kevin, and I are going to be all over the place in the next few months: Miami, Austin, London, Limoges, Amsterdam, and a few more soon-to-be-announced locations. We’d love to chat with you if you’re at any of these events and hopefully we’ll be able to arrange some meet-ups as we trot the globe.