Regarding the possibility of Twitter incorporating advertising: I’ve looked at the Japanese iteration of Twitter with its ads, and I can honestly say they didn’t offend me.

I’m sufficiently comfortable with the current level of advertising I encounter daily on the internet, from sidebars in websites and blogs to floating boxes and other escapees from my popup filter. I’m becoming immune.

I don’t think using the type of advertising they are in the Japanese version here would have any impact on my use of and appreciate for Twitter…even though I pay more attention to Friendfeed these days.

i don’t see why they’re not talking about a ‘pro’ ad-free version. i would surely pay money for a more stable, and ad-less twitter. i never went ‘pro’ on Pownce because i just did not see the value proposition, but twitter is … well it’s twitter. it’s this huge deal. i love twitter. i *want* to send twitter money! and that’s not something i often want to do.

I disagree (humbly :) ) on the media point Jack, I think twitter totally aced it with its simple anchor linking method and limited text. Instant messaging is none-intrusive (unlike on-site emails) and a link is all I need to point something out on the net. + Twitter has a feature that without it (pownce proves) they’d be missing the point- The twitter sidebar. Once you get used to loosing that browser realestate, twitter actually makes sense. And as for inclusion of media, I think Soup.com does it better.

Tali

I don’t think I ever saw pownce as a direct competitor to twitter. Sure they sort of overlap in the “instant message” space, but twitter was always about mobile communication from everywhere. Pownce has always been about sharing, sharing links, sharing media, sharing stories, sharing your life.

I have always used them both and very rarely do I post the same info to both places.

*shrug* but maybe I am an anomaly.

I think that if we wait a few months or even a year there is going to be something new will come along and twitter will be in the shadows. Similar to the popularity of myspace then facebook came along. I personally don’t want to know the play by play of a persons day.

Then a day after this post, Pownce announces that it’s providing it’s users with more space for media. I always thought that Pownce was for sharing media, but most people just wrote it off as a twitter clone, because it looked a lot like twitter and 10Mb just wasn’t really enough space.