The Pownce Developer: Interviewing Leah Culver

An Interview by Thord Daniel Hedengren

Leah Culver is a co-founder of Pownce, a social site that just recently went out of beta. With that in mind, and me being a happy Pownce pro user and all, it felt natural to request an interview.

Don’t know what Pownce is? The you should probably check it out before reading this, it’s open to the general public now, so pop over and get an account. Feel free to befriend me if you feel like it, just note that you’re coming from BloggerTalks in the message section when requesting friendship.

Good? Great, let’s get to the questions and, more importantly, answers then! Enjoy.

First of all, why don’t you tell the BloggerTalks readers a little bit about who Leah Culver is, in case they’re not Powncers like me?
I’m a co-founder and the lead developer of Pownce, a social messaging application. I’m also involved as a developer with OAuth, a standard for web API authentication, and am an advocate for online social network portability. 

You’re involved in Pownce as a developer, and more I gather. What are your responsibilities in the Pownce project?
As a developer, I work on the Pownce website, the mobile site, and the API. Lately, I’ve become more involved in the business aspects of Pownce including marketing, press, and partner relations. I really enjoy working with the developer community and am looking forward to more of that soon. 

Pownce isn’t in beta anymore. Did the launch work out as planned? Anything you had to push back?
The launch went really well. The site was down for a few minutes while we ran database updates and registered some API keys, but it went as expected. We’re always pushing forward
 
Pownce isn’t exactly packed with ads, the ones that are there are pretty unobtrusive actually. How will you make money?
Currently we display text-only small ads with every 15 or so notes but we also offer an ad-free pro upgrade for Pownce accounts for only $20 a year. In the next year, we hope to sell a bit more advertising and offer more benefits for our pro members without taking away from the current user experience.

There’s a desktop Pownce application using Adobe AIR. How come you chose to release a desktop app yourselves, and not leave that to API-hacking developers? And why Adobe AIR as the base for it, it being far from done and having numerous problems?
We looked at several ways to offer a desktop application and were happy that Adobe AIR works with both Mac and Windows operating systems. Right now, we’re working with developers to create a full API with the hopes that there will be many other tools built for Pownce including more desktop applications.

Pownce is constantly compared to Twitter, another microblogging tool. Do you think that’s fair?
I’m surprised at how difficult it is to describe to people that Pownce isn’t about personal status updates, but I think they get it right away after trying it for themselves. Really, it’s more about sharing stuff with people who you feel will actually appreciate it. It’s much more personal. 

What’s your view on microblogging? It’s certainly a big thing these days, where do you think it will lead us, and what impact will it have on the blogosphere in the long run?
Microblogging, posting short messages, has been around for a really long time. It’s hard to tell if by “microblogging”, people really mean something closer to “social messaging”. The relationships between bloggers is really what’s changed. I’m more interested in how online social networks can shape a messaging service. 

How do you envision Pownce in 2008? Where do you want to be with this project when it’s time to wrap up the year?
I’d like to move towards Pownce as a service instead of just a website, a desktop application, and a mobile site. In the short term, this means a better API and strong relationships with partners and independent developers. By the end of 2008, I’d like Pownce to be the best service for social messaging. 

How will you achieve that? Have you, for instance, settled on a target audience, and know how to reach them already?
Maybe it sounds naive, but I think the target audience for Pownce is rather broad. We’re seeing people use it in so many different ways. Up until now, we’ve been a bit media shy, so we’ll definitely try to reach out more with interviews and events.

Kevin Rose, the Digg founder, is involved in Pownce. Does this mean that we’ll see integration between Pownce and Digg, the sharing of features, or something similar in the future?
Pownce and Digg are separate companies with fairly different products. We recently added ways to find your Pownce friends via other social networks such as Facebook, Flickr, Twitter, and Digg, but the communities remain quite independent.

I think we’re starting to accept the fact that most people are active on several social networks. At Pownce we definitely acknowledge networks such as YouTube, Vimeo, and Flickr by allowing members to embedded videos and photos in their Pownce notes. We also encourage members to display their profiles on other social networks such as their Digg profiles.

Finally, throw us a bone! What’s the next slated Pownce feature? Thousands of users are dying to know…
A full API and more mobile features. Please don’t die.

I’d like to thank Leah Culver for doing this interview with me. Check out Pownce, the Pownce blog, and Leah’s own blog of course. Yes, she’s on Pownce as well. Duh!

This Interview was published on January 27, 2008 at 7:16 am • Did you like it? Subscribe!
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