Twitter + Spamtachments = Pownce

To: Pownce
From: Web 2.0 Users

It Would Be So Nice If You Weren't Here...(thanks Charles Grodin)

The irreverent uncov reminds us that Pownce is still alive, even if only barely. I might not have bothered mentioning the rather mundane continued existence of this particular Twitter clone, but Pownce isn't just a Twitter clone. It's an annoying Twitter clone. Think of Danny DeVito v. Arnold Schwarzenegger in the movie Twins.

While I might Twitter or even Jaiku to my pals, I swore off Pownce because I kept getting useless links to attachments, pictures, videos, and other unwanted interruptions. Since they were unwanted, I deemed them spam. (Even my friends can spam me.) I thought that I might be outside of their target demographic and too remote from the "in crowd" to understand why some people might want this. It appears that I wasn't the only one who didn't get Pownce. At TechCrunch, Arrington muses that Pownce may be a dead pool candidate.

uncov's clever chart says that Pownce is beyond even the resuscitory powers of power blogger Arrington. The compete chart below suggests nothing different. I tossed in Jaiku's traffic for comparison. Even though Jaiku's traffic may be in the dumpster with Pownce, they can never die as the eternally revitalizing blood of Google now runs in their veins.

GrandCentral, still groovy after all these calls...

It is month's later and I still love the GrandCentral phone service. I use my GrandCentral number as my main business number and try to get most people to call that number. The voice mail is fabulous. I can reply to voice mails via email if I choose, and when I am driving down the road, GrandCentral's voice mail acts as a central control, allowing me to return phone calls by pressing only the "2" key on my phone. When the return call completes I am back to my voice mail and can archive the message and move on to the next one. I also like being able to categorize my callers and have their calls routed to my home, cell, and VoIP phones accordingly. I upload my contacts to GrandCentral and assign them to groups, each of which has different priorities for their calls.

Today I thought about the virtues of GrandCentral as I read Mike Arrington's plight at TechCrunch. He found himself in a position today where an idiot attorney was threatening him on the phone. If Arrington had been using GrandCentral and someone had started bugging him, he could have taken that one phone number and marked it as spam, or simply told GrandCentral to start screening all calls from numbers he hadn't marked as contacts. Either way, he would have been only to assign those calls their proper priority with a click or two.

Mike, I'd recommend you go get your GrandCentral number today. Knowing you... you're going to need it.

Previous coverage of GrandCentral is here.