Finally signed up for Pownce sometime back. It’s more useful that Twitter/Jaiku/Orkut. It lets you set the privacy level for every blurb you type. You can set the visibility level at public/to all friends/specific friends. I like that thing very much. Plus, you don’t need to start an email application if you need to send a file or talk about an event. Orkut won’t let you send any files. Plus, all the blurbs on Orkut as visible to everyone (which is sick!). What sucks is that none of my friends are on Pownce yet. Because you need an invite to join it.
I got six invites and have two left. So, if you want one, then drop me a comment 🙂 They should be giving us more invites soon.
Do you guys use any networking tool? Which one is the best according to you?
P.S. My first non-Harry Potter post since ages!
Time and Again 
one invite here please! 🙂
and with that zzzzz. time to sleep gnite see ya tom
I’ll friend request you on Pownce.
@Pallav, sent you an invite. So, one more left.
@Zac, sure! Thanks 🙂 this is my profile
Ruhi I guess I’ll take one to try it out. I use facebook over orkut and myspace
@Patrick, Sure! 🙂 I’m on facebook too, though I don’t use it much. And I totally dislike myspace. It’s too cluttered.
I never really used myspace. I had an account there and the first day I got about 200 spam messages, so I decided it was just better left alone.
I do like facebook ~ partly because of some things I do at work and also because I’ve been able to catch up with some old friends on it.
I got your invite to pownce~ will give it a go! ty again 😀
i prefer orkut but thats an awesome feature of regulating scraps/blurbs! tho ive not yet got the invitation to try this out and give some feedback yet!!
@Patrick, Yes, the spam system of Myspace sucks totally. I think it’s meant for people who are into a lot of music and stuff.
Facebook is really nice, I agree…I like it a lot; very effective for keeping in touch. But frankly speaking, all those new plug ins are driving me crazy. They are quite annoying.
@Pallav, I did send you an invite at your gmail address. 😦 I sent one to you and one to Patrick. Don’t have anymore left.
that is surispeed at gmail dot com right?
nope…it said pallavsuri at gmail dot com…that’s the one that was listed against the comments. Is that a problem?
My mistake! Checked my list and I sent it to someone with the email add pallavsuri at yahoo dot com. Don’t know what I was thinking. Anyway, I got 6 more invites, so I sent you one at your email add.
Pownce sound interesting & i like the UI…
Plz send me one invite. carrotmadman6(a)gmail[dot]com
@carrot, sent! 🙂 Check your mail.
Thx for the invite. Got it. 😀
got it!!! its awful quiet in pownce … privacy overkill?
@pallav, if you like orkut, then I don’t know if you will like Pownce. 🙂 You can view public blurbs and the replies or those blurbs that are meant for “all friends”. Private blurbs- you cannot. I’m still exploring it. I like the simplicity though.
it’s certainly…simple… except it seems a little unwieldy thus far for a site so simplistic
@Patrick, I’m actually a little confused with the whole public blurb/public profile thing. What shows up…what doesn’t. The fact that I can’t find even a single friend who is at Pownce is not good news. Supposedly, they are growing very fast…but a long way to go before they catch up with Facebook/Myspace.
I hear ya. Look me up on facebook next time you are on there. I’m in the Denver network
@everyone, I just think pownce is still very green even compared to orkut and they’ve got some things yet to do in order for it to attempt competing with a site like facebook for attention. I don’t necessarily like orkut but I”ve used it before and it was ok – maybe I saw it a little too early on as well.
@Patrick, I added you on facebook (Display pic- two kids, right?).
Pownce is in its early stages of growth. That’s pretty evident from their “Join by invitation only” policy for now. Plus, we have been given only 6 invites each. After I ran out of my 6 invites, they did provide me with 6 more invites…it does have a long way to go before it competes with the other networking sites.
Orkut has grown a lot…you can join communities and stuff, just like on Facebook. But it doesn’t have the applications that you can use on Facebook. Nor does it have the ‘network system’. Your FULL profile is always visible to everyone. You cannot pick and choose what others can view…I like Facebook much better than orkut.
hmm. yeah I presume that pownce will continue to grow, at least I hope they do if they wish to remain relevant. The other major thing that is staring them in the face is the copyright infringement that comes along with posting videos on any website – it’s killing youtube and google video right now.
I looked on facebook – yes that is likely me but I didn’t see any notes. Maybe it needs time to sync up; I’ll check it again shortly.
Yeah, you are totally correct about the copyright infringement thing 🙂 The number of videos that are removed every day is kind of annoying, but you can’t really blame them. Pownce will have to face that too, if they grow. I don’t think I’ll be using it much. Facebook solves my purpose!
I added you at least 20 mins back, I think…
morning guys!! ruhi u can chose all the important details like contact info and personal details to be viewable by whom on orkut. and orkut’s older and maturer than facebook! facebook has a lot of apps and stuff and is now over taking orkut in a big way! after myspace which is way to gawdy and cluttered orkut is the original networking site.
and if u have used icq u wud remember it combined the features of Instant messenger and social networking sites (exchanging friends). now these two features have split since AOL took over from Miranda (original ICQ creators).
It is sad but i think we have gone in the reverse direction rather than progressing further from ICQ days.
@Pallav,
Yes, you can. But the same setting applies to everyone who views your profile. While on Facebook, you can set different levels of visibility for different groups of people. Nobody can view your profile unless you add him/her as your friend by default. Whereas in orkut, the entire profile is visible even though the person may not be in your friend list.
I don’t remember ICQ…never really used it. Yahoo messenger was the first chat application that I used.
Yeah! Google does that! They try to ‘simplify’ things and remove many so-called ‘add-ons’. Look at Gmail for example. Or look at Gtalk..stripped down versions of their competitors. That’s simplicity for you! LOL.
” Whereas in orkut, the entire profile is visible even though the person may not be in your friend list. ”
oh its not. u can specify which details everyone can see or which only friends can see or which only you can see or which friends of friends can see.
personally this amount of control is sufficient for me. i had around 500 friends on orkut once.. setting personal settings for each friend would have taken me a couple of weeks.
the broad controls are good since they let you interact with others and release your details in a controlled fashion.
Infact orkut’s privacy settings are the best around from what i have seen. some over do it some don’t do it at all. orkut is just right if you explore it a bit.
but yes scraps is the main issue privacy wise. they are visible to all. but u can bulk delete them as well so that’s taken care off too in a way not perfect but good enough.
overall exposure is just perfect on orkut…. now only if they make it more like facebook aesthetically and add those apps it would be perfect!! operationally it’s already got a thumbs up from me 🙂
@Pallav,
I think you are not getting what I mean by the different levels of visibility at Facebook. I suggest you try it out once.
Yes, BUT the same setting is applied uniformly. But in facebook, whereas one group of friends can view your pictures, another group of friends can be put on the restricted list and may not be able to see the same things. See the difference? You can create different levels within your friend group. In Orkut, the same setting applies to all your friends.
yeah but ICQ was a hack to backdoor into someone’s machine with some simple perl scripting. It was a good messenger and all, but it was a definite loophole. A lot like mIRC, honestly, in that way.
I took another look at orkut – I guess it’s ok, but I think what ruhi says about the privacy issues is pretty spot-on. Facebook, I’m a little wary about the info being shared with other websites, but not so much about what’s being displayed to the average user.
@Patrick, I hadn’t really explored Facebook for a long time, until you asked me to add you yesterday. Then I saw some of the privacy settings that it gives us and it’s reallly impressive. I didn’t even know that I could sell my stuff at Marketplace. It’s quite handy for selling some small junk that I haven’t used since a long time. 🙂
agreed. and it gets as many views as craigslist, quite possibly more so, at least by people who’d be targeted to buying your stuff, that is.
@patrick did u try icq 6.1 yet? yes that was FUN! lol
@ruhi yes ruhi thats why orkut has a lot of catching up to do. but i’d still say setting every friends privacy settings can land you in a soup if u have lots of friends. a couple of them and you can keep track of things but when it goes to around 500 then it gets a weebit complicated, especially if you the majority in real life.
especially if you *know* the majority in real life.
I stopped using ICQ somewhere around 1999. and mIRC some time in 2000. Since then I’ve used neither – real-time chat really isn’t my thing unless it’s face-to-face.
@Pallav, I agree! 🙂 Everything has its own pros and cons.
I feel that ICQ/Yahoo Msgr or chatting in general is such a waste of time, really. You can’t do anything else while you are chatting. I used to do it a lot earlier. But now, I have totally stopped or do it very very rarely. When we chat, we need to focus all our attention on the other person. Most of the times, people mistake your “Online” status as meaning that you are available to chat. What if I’m waiting online for someone else, or worse, I don’t want to chat with that person? E-mailing is so much better.
@ruhi point well taken tho i have an additional perspective to this
1. meeting in person – active communication
2. meeting on chat – active again but with an element of passiveness
3. emailing – totally passive. no spontaneity
as we progress from 1 to 3 i feel we r moving more into our shells and degenrating the brain and becoming less social.
just my 2 cents on how i see it. id rather be between 1 and 2 personally atleast. professional communication more passive the better just kidding 😛
@Pallav, Haha…I like the last point regarding professional communication..very funny, but true! 🙂 I am So comfortable just emailing instead of meeting in person when it comes to professional commitments. In fact, the entire system is such that emailing is encouraged because the other person can respond when he/she is free.
yes, this point has been well debated over the last 15 years that email has become a primary, standard means of communication. I remember very distinctly in 1992 seeing on 60 minutes an interview with an astrophysicist who (people thought was crazy) said that as we become to rely on the Internet more and more for social activity, we actually ostracize ourselves from one another to previouly unprecedented degrees. Such that, by creating personal comfort in pseudo-social environments, we are breeding generations of complete eccentrics who do not excel at true interpersonal relations.
I bought his theory then, and I still believe it today. Pallav in your list I much prefer #1, I despise #2 and I am crutched, like the rest of us, to #3 by something else like work. If you were to add snail mail to that list, like a personal letter from one person to another, it would likely be #1.5, yes?
Patrick & Pallav, It’s such a sad state of affairs. We sit in the same office and still prefer emailing each other. In my school, emailing is preferred to meeting in person. If the work can be done by a simple email, then good!
I actually like snail mails. The only ones I get are from my mom (even though she uses the computer a lot) and some other greeting cards.
Do you guys receive snail mails?
so true. but sadly the only snail mail I get is packages of stuff, credit card offers about 4 every day, magazines, catalogues, chinese takeout menus, and coupons for stuff I will never use. such is suburban mail systems, but never really anything from someone I know or care to hear from.
ruhi shouldn’t you be in bed by now? 😀
@Patrick, I cringe every time I open my mail box and see all those useless coupons, catalogs and stupid credit card offers.
I should definitely be in bed by now! I’m off to sleep then. Have a nice and sunny day…and I hope you are doing better than yesterday. 🙂
ah those snail mails can only come from girlfriends lol im single these days so its pretty much the junk you guys are getting.
@Pallav, Quite true! 🙂 For the sake of snail mails, I hope you hook up soon 😛
lol thanks for your wishes im loving the status 😛