• Business Week, Tuesday, July 10, 2007 11 AM

Kevin Rose, the 30-year-old entrepreneur who started the community-based article voting site Digg.com and the Web video production firm Revision3, is at it again. His new project is a social networking, instant messaging, file-sharing hybrid called Pownce. Given Rose's track record, venture capitalists are lining up to get a glimpse.

"I probably would invest in Pownce if he's going out for funding," Digg and Revision3 investor Ron Conway said. The idea behind Pownce is a powerful one, but its nothing new: Users create profiles, assemble a list of buddies, and can swap messages, invitations, photos, music and any other files over a real-time network. AOL has tried the same thing with AIM Pages, a social network built on the popularity of AOL Instant Messenger. So has MSN's Windows Live Messenger and MySpace.

Whereas those sites attempted to merge together disparate features, Pownce is built on the idea of integrating them. It also caters to the 20% of Web users who fall into the early adopter/tech-savvy category. Built on the cheap and launched with a low profile, Rose has relied heavily on users to produce content and grow Pownce's visibility through word of mouth. The social network plans to make money from selling ads and premium subscriptions.

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