Pownce, Exit Here.

While, I wasn’t kind to Pownce a year ago, twice even. There are many unfortunate things about the shuttering of Pownce.

Halfway down the list is making the mistaken assumption that the same shuttering couldn’t happen to Twitter (or any other centralized, free, web service). Remember Evan sold Blogger to Google 6 years ago – before Blogger had a sustained, cash flow positive, revenue model.

Something about leopards and spots.

If Pownce was a publicly traded company that just closed up shop – the price of Twitter, Facebook, and Friendfeed would have just tanked (then again, I’ve been shorting ‘social networks’ for a year).

Perhaps Pownce’s greatest success was simply all the press and publicity it got. For a service around for maaaaayyybe 24 months – much enk was spilled.

So congrats to Leah – on a successful exit.

Oh, and Leah, perhaps you could join us for a MinneDemo or MinneBar?