Pownce put out to pasture

POWNCE HAS BEEN sold and shuttered. The microblogging service that was launched to compete with Twitter has been flogged off to blogging diggdiggcompany Six Apart, which will "integrate the technology" (read: steal a few lines of code and bin the rest) with its existing services, which include Vox and Type Pad.

Pownce failed to achieve any kind of critical mass, despite the appeal of its co-founder Kevin Rose, better known as the founder of Digg and hero to the legions of geek worshippers that read the site daily. Indeed, the death knell was sounded for Pownce when Rose himself switched over his regular postings to Twitter earlier this year. In an ironic twist, he swiftly became the most popular person on Twitter, even as his competitor service nosedived.

Leah Culver, Pownce's second co-founder, will move to Six Apart, from where she will attempt to work on something with a little more success. Culver has become something of a micro celebrity in the San Francisco tech bubble ecosystem - even appearing on the front cover of MIT Technology Review back in July - thanks to her combination of geek programming creds and blonde hair.

Her notoriety has been added to by this deal, which appears to link many of the strands in her love life, as well as her professional life: Culver dated Pownce's third co-founder Daniel Burka as they launched the company, and the sale to Six Apart appears to have had something to do with the fact that Culver previously dated Brad Fitzpatrick, the founder of Live Journal, who also sold out to Six Apart last year.

Culver's MIT cover saw her blowing a big pink bubble-gum bubble in honour of the hype surrounding the Web 2.0 'movement'.

For Culver, it seems the bubble has well and truly burst. µ