Jordan Wollman Creative Direction

Goodbye Pownce!

Although this is certainly not new news (as it was announced a few days ago), I can’t help but think to myself, “What on earth was SixApart thinking?!” Here’s what, from my perspective, happened.

SixApart laid off 8% of its workforce, bought Pownce, and then shut the service down.

This brings to mind another buy-out that went completely different. Remember when a little search company bought a little video community website? Yeah, YouTube sold for $1.65 billion to Google, and guess what? Google, for the most part, left it alone. If anything, they made it better, gave it more resource, and expanded the service. Only two years and some change later have they slipped the needle in and added in-video advertising.

They got permission from the YouTube fan base to do so by leaving the service much the same for a time, and then slowly adding change that wasn’t paradigm-blowing. But SixApart? What did they gain by shutting down a service with a loyal user-base?

From my perspective, as a Pownce user, they got a whole lot of alienation. I won’t be visiting SixApart for their blogging tools - I already have one I love (WP) - and certainly won’t entertain a “reboot” of the Pownce service. In the end, all they’ve really acquired is a talented few people who came from a great concept and are going to be “allowed to grow and explore” by a company who destroyed what they had built.

Maybe I’m being overly critical, but this just seems like a huge waste, and an even larger mistake. I hope they have some aces up their sleeve with this one, because at this point, I’m out.

Thoughts?

I know this is probably a bit late, since the album was released in August this year (2008), but I have to say, this is the kind of music that makes me remember exactly why I decided to explore progressive electronic music.

This album is beautiful, powerful, and is a true journey. Sasha brings to the table yet again a masterpiece of music and emotion. Being that it’s not only a mixed album, but a semi-remix album as well, this marks a new kind of standard for electronic collaboration.

Do yourself a favor and buy this album, then go listen to it on a magnificent sound system, or some high-frequency-range monitors. You won’t regret the 73ish minutes.

Get it on iTunes or from Global Underground.

I recently published, along with a website realign project, a white paper on Usability. It’s titled Usability: a nine letter, four letter word. Here’s a quick snippet from the paper.

Usability is a subject you need to care about. Your reputation will be cemented or damaged by your understanding of it. You cannot survive without a deep commitment to developing a passionate philosophy of championing usability.

Hop on over to Ariamedia’s website and download a fresh, piping-hot copy yourself! And while you’re at it, stick around and check out the new layout, design, and sweat videos.