the dj paine show

POWNCE – the “epic fail”?

djp7224/7/2008

i love the POWNCE network of people. i have found it to be a great community of mostly really interesting people. i have two free accounts on pownce that i like to use – one for djp photography & one for mustard empire - i use my djp account the most, i love to post new pictures, setting up friends groups, posting some pictures just to people who are more friendly etc. i have my awesome ping.fm account set up to update my pownce/djp account and that works great for simple status update style bits… also i love pimping some of my favourite music on the mustard account, and getting into interesting discussions about the music etc… awesome.
according to the super brains at pownce war i am the number 5 powncer in the universe, check it:

and check the top 10 here.

BUT! there is some SERIOUS trouble in paradise.

about a month ago i satrted getting some serious issues logging into my pownce accounts. i went to one of the greatest ideas on the interwebs: get satasfaction, and started a discussion:

“i am on a mac and have the same problem in both safari & firefox. if i am not logged in to Pownce i can go to pownce and surf around no problems, i can even go to my own pownce profile page and look around no problems. i can create a dummy account and then sign in and be fine. no problems. but as soon as i sign in to my REAL ACCOUNT then i cannot get into my pownce. once i sign in i can view other people’s pownce accounts but i CANNOT get into mine. HELP ME! this is severely annoying. my awesome pownce account is http://pownce.com/djp”

then from the pownce community manager Ariel i got this: “Just a quick update – we’re still looking into these isolated issues. In the meantime, if you want to create a new Pownce account, I can transfer your username to it afterwards. Let me know.”

well of course i didn’t want that so Ariel went on to say:

“Can you try logging in on a different system (e.g. different network/computer)? If not, I would need permission from you to login and test your account. We’re wondering if this is potentially a problem w/ the network or computer you’re using due to the browser errors you’re encountering and the sporadic nature of it. Any additional details help – thanks!”

i was up for them to log in and see what the problem was… so i gave permission. Ariel and the pownce team tested and here’s the reply.

“The issue seems to be caused by the fact that you’re a fan of an unusually large amount of people (DJ Paine, you’re a fan of 6,872 people and friends with 2,878 people). Unfortunately, it’s difficult for us to make the site perform for people who are a fan of such a large amount of users. In order to make your accounts accessible again, you can login (in which you might encounter the white screen) and then navigate to http://pownce.com/djp/fan_of and cancel some of your friend requests. We’re very sorry for this and we hope to be able to accommodate these types of situations in the future.”

woah woah woah! i had some questions:

“ariel, how many people can i be a fan of? what is the sweet spot?
and when is this going to change? if ever? i like being fans of lots of people!”

she relied:

” This is really a trial and error and it depends on the quantity of notes coming in to your home page more than how many people you follow. I’m *guessing* that following more than 500 people will start to slow the page down….. No current timeline on when this will change. We’re always working on improving the speed of the site, but this typically requires long-term work. Apologies for the tediousness of the process!”

so i went and had a good look at all those people i was fans of and i realized that 90% never post anything, they don’t use pownce. so ok, i’ll get rid of them! away with all those people i am a fan of! {on pownce you remain someones “fan” when you friend request them and they do nothing or deny you – that’s why interweb celeb kevin rose has 15,623 fans and a didly 132 friends…} to see who YOU are a fan of on pownce go to www.pownce.com/YOUR USER NAME/fan_of/ – once there you can see a list of people and the “cancel request” button it looks like this:now how easy is it to do a mass cancel of people you are fans of? let’s take a look {excuse the voice}

thursday 24th juky 2008 – POWNCE FAIL from djp on Vimeo.
FUN!!!!!!!!

now mind you, i WAS a fan of 6,872 people and as you can see from the video above i have now go it down to 4,860. it has taken me days of mindless clicking to do that {i’ll watch a video podcast or a movie on the imac at night while i click on the pownce page to one side… yeah i know what you’re thinking; dj paine you know how to live it up!}.

i’ll end this blog entry with a few points i’ve gleaned from this experience:

1} be careful of “social networks” that keep people you want to “friend” as people you are fans of – this whole concept sucks big time. friends and fans and all those words are stupid.

2} if you are planning on building a social network {why bother?} please do not cripple users for really using your site.

3} pownce team – fix this. or at least make a mass delete button or something!!!

EDIT / UPDATE – for those interested… other people are having this issue, big time:

Thomas Hawk talks about it here and here.

A lot of people chime in here.

DIGG this story here.

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the battle of the digital life aggregators

djp725/4/2008

over a year ago Jolane and i were shooting the breeze about how to have a successful internet service. i said the no brain winner would be a website service that collates and aggregates all the social platforms into one easy interface. somewhere you could see everything and even update status’ from the same interface… Jolane said it was a stupid idea and so i had to just sit and wait for some other genius to build it.
now there are {in my opinion} three services fighting for my affection:
profilactic
social thing
friend feed
let’s take a closer look:

1} Profilactic

i heard about the horribly named profilactic from cnet’s “the real deal” podcast and i dig it alot. basically you sign up and you can choose from 170+ online services that you use – put in your details for the services you want to share, choose if it’s in your mash up, and bam. done. it is very cool and the lay out is nice, also the attitude of the guys behind it is hip. you can jump onto my profile and see a “mash up” of everything i’m doing here: my profilactic mashup

2} Social Thing

got a beta invite to this new service, it allows you to add facebook, flickr, pownce, twitter, vimeo etc, not many services, {no one can touch profilactic’s 170 services} and then when i sign in i can see everything i have online on those services… no profile pages {yet} what it does well is allow me to post a single status update on social thing and it pushes it out to the services you have on there that allow status updates. that is cool.

3} Friend Feed

and last we have the much hyped friend feed- these guys have somehow got all the tech geek hipsters on board and there is a lot of rah rah about these guys. i sorta don’t get it yet {as to why people are raving about them} you can add up to 35 popular online services… as far as why i think people are loving it is because you can easily find and add friends {so it’s almost it’s own social platform} and {probably} the biggest reason, you can comment on anything that comes up in the stream from anyone- the comments appear on friend feed. that is a brilliant idea. so friend feed is almost it’s own platform…
my friend feed profile

ok, so at this early stage of evaluation here is where i’m at:
i want profilactic’s massive choice of services and their funky attitude, i want social thing’s great status push & their good customer service and i want friend feed’s popularity and commenting.

i’ll keep messing around with them and keep you informed, i have 2 social thing invites left, so…

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