Twitter-competitor Pownce is shutting down on December 15, following its acquisition by blogging firm Six Apart. Pownce says users can export their accounts to rival sites such as Six Apart’s Vox service, retaining their messages and media. A number of Pownce users are also expected to migrate to Twitter.
Pownce was founded last June by Leah Culver, Daniel Burka and Kevin Rose, founder and chief architect of Digg. Six Apart will merge Pownce’s engineers with its Vox blogging service, while Rose and Burka are joining Six Apart as advisors.
Pownce launched to the public in January, ending months of hype surrounding Rose’s secretive startup. Before the full launch, invites to join the Pownce network were selling on eBay for USD5 each.
However, Pownce is not as popular as Twitter, which consistently outperforms the startup service.
Though the Pownce service will end on December 15, Culver writes in a company blog post that the remaining Pownce staff plan to return next year with ?something much better?. It is unclear whether the Pownce developers will revise their existing product or collaborate on a new project with their new colleagues at Vox.
The acquisition comes just weeks after Six Apart laid off 16 employees, or 8% of its staff. Despite CEO Chris Alden’s prophecy that a recession would boost blogging, the firm is preparing for the downturn by making cuts, which included Alden accepting a 15% reduction in salary.
