Neomeme

The New York Times has a fawning article today about Pownce, Kevin Rose’s new startup. Pownce is called, among other things, “the hottest startup in Silicon Valley”, with “coveted” invitations- the author has clearly never heard of a private beta-

Digg was disruptive (though perpetually unprofitable). Google was disruptive. MySpace was disruptive. Pownce is a glorified Twitter clone with file sharing. If it did not have Kevin Rose behind it, it would have faded into obscurity, just like a Digg story that is not dugg by top Digg users. Let me restate that. The exact same “disruptive” and “coveted” technology would have certainly gone completely ignored without this:

Don’t get me wrong- Kevin Rose is a brilliant entrepreneur. He was great on Screen Savers, and Digg was a groundbreaking technology. But Pownce (to which I had a “coveted” invite since about a month ago, when Mashable gave away unlimited Pownce invites) is anything but brilliant.

I can almost sense myself slipping into that angry Uncov tone when I call Pownce anything but revolutionary. This is not that kind of blog(although if it was, I have certainly seen, and been pitched, many startups I could heap derision on), so I will withhold further comment, and close with a tiny piece of unscientific evidence a tiny bit of unscientific evidence- once again, when faced with a truly disruptive technology, Pownce comes up short.