Luke Ashe-Browne Open source, web technology and feeble attempts at eloquence

Web 2.0, Ajax and all that tripe.

I've often found the term Web 2.0 abhorrent, and the acronym AJAX fallacious...

However, I find myself in need of something with which to refer to this stack of technologies as. So AJAX it will be. And how does one expect name the categorization of the "Social Networking" topic in this blog(another annoying term) in a fashion that will be as a magnet to web crawlers, without using such a term as Web 2.0.

So having fully sold out and revealing my fickle loyalties to idealistic principles, I now present to you, my mass of loyal readers, the first in what I hope to be many blog posts covering the topic of collaborative social networking and AJAX based technologies and websites.

And so, it's down to brass tacks.

I've started to use pownce to get the measure of it. So far I can see that it IS actually slightly different, while still somewhat commensurate to other services like twitter. All jibes aside, of course, there is more to come on this as I delve into the depths of the interfaces, especially when I get a chance to act like a sadistic child with an ill-fated small mammal, and maul their forth coming API. Could pownce be the Flickr of social, collaborative link sharing sites? We will see. With Kevin Rose of Digg.com behind it, well, it becomes even more plausible. Everyone one seems to love this former TechTV personality. I will admit to having enjoyed his antics in online media appearances from time to time.

I believe on the GigaOm show, Om Malik credited Jason Calacanis himself with the quote "The success of pownce can be derived directly from the number of pownce fans on Kevin Roses account." or something to that effect (I'll correct it if mistaken).

The Apollo based interface is a really nice touch. I think it could be the gimmick to give the site the initial foothold that it will need to take a place in the top social sites around. It is also great to see a use of an emerging technology like Adobe's Apollo project, by notable startups right from their inception. Quite the chess move if you ask me providing the site with a true differentiating feature. Also this example could server as a possible boon to the still in beta release technology itself.

So the underlying question is what have we learned from the experience. Well I've learned if you comment on something that a lot of people are looking at, such as a post by Kevin Rose, a lot of people will add you as a contact. Perhaps in the flurry of participants creating as extensive a contact list as they can from the outset, I've been caught up in the mass hysteria, I've started clicking on people with whom I have no association in blind delectation. The more I add, the more chance of friend requests to not add and keep as fans, ever raising that counter in the smoothly shaded, cool desktop widget, perhaps I could rival Mister Rose himself, a demigod in this microcosm? It's like the beginning of myspace or bebo all over again, and then, less. The fun ends, abruptly. There is no more to do, the features to explore and strain are at their boundary. An intense and short lived excitement, this site has lost it's edge, it was a keen looking design, a new way to express your need for connection and vie for attentions in a domain that's scope is just a bit small.

Oddly though it does not stop me using it. Perhaps because there is part of me looking for that feature I missed out on first time, that extra button to appear in an update, or some thing actually interesting to be linked. Is it just one more party that people will be scared of missing, or is there some value in the postulate that the system must evolve, shed off it's old ways and bind to a new host? Do we need to migrate to richer pastures from previous incarnations of this feature set, like hotmail users to gmail? There is promise, as I've mentioned, the API release is impending, and if the usefulness, diversity and creativity of the flickr API ecosystem can be replicated in this form, then I will hold from condemning my pownce account to decadence, by the way of the another which was once a glorious breathing entity on myspace.

Until I see what happens next, what can I conclude? Nothing for now, only that I've glimpsed the beasts form, there is hope, delicately lying in the hands of those who govern pownce. My hope is that they would manage and develop this system into something that is a fine tool, and not a fad.