Lessons to be learned from the demise of Pownce

Pownce - a Twitter rival - was just absorbed by Six Apart but there are several key lessons the social network world can takeaway from their demise. (From Mashable)

1. Less is sometimes more - Pownce made adding groups, file sharing and other popular features easy to use without "cluttering the service."


2. Being a more reliable option doesn't make your service popular - despite Twitters frequent down times and technical difficulties Pownce wasn't a strong enough name to pull consumers away.


3. If you come late to the party, you'd better make a big entrance - "If you’re not first to the game, but perhaps second or third, you need to do your research very thoroughly; sometimes being bigger, better and faster than the competitors simply won’t do."

The main takeaway from me is that brand recognition and top of mind awareness still trump better service and social networking options. Consumers will stick with what they know despite better platforms out there - the onus is on would-be competitors to create the best product possible. At least for now, Twitter is still the king.