Rubenerd

The Pownce export notice on the Settings page

Shortly after I blogged about the demise of Pownce (Goodbye Pownce, I Hardly Used Ya), I received an email in my inbox (as opposed to receiving an email in my dishwasher) from the Pownce folk that they're shutting down. I already knew about this obviously, but what I didn't know was that they were kind enough to offer an export feature so our data won't become dust in the wind when they finally go offline:

We are sad to announce that Pownce is shutting down on December 15, 2008. As of today, Pownce will no longer be accepting new users or new pro accounts.

To help with your transition, we have built an export tool so you can save your content. You can find the export tool at Settings > Export. Please export your content by December 15, 2008, as the site will not be accessible after this date.

Please visit our new home to find out more:
http://www.sixapart.com/pownce

Our thanks go out to everyone who contributed to the Pownce community,

The Pownce Crew

It's not as clear cut as they say; unlike del.icio.us which takes a few hours to generate an exported file, Pownce claims it will take several days to process. Still, once it's done they will send you an email along with a file which you can use to import into Movable Type, as well as a generic XML file which should be easy enough to import into most other blogging applications.

As I said previously, other than a handful of messages my Pownce posts were just automatic duplicates of posts I was sending to Twitter from my desktop client. Still, the electronic archaeologist in me likes the idea of having a backed up archive of my Pownce account for posterity once it goes offline. Who knows, perhaps my grandchildren will be doing a school report on Kevin Rose at some point in the distant future and I'll be able to provide them with material from the short lived, mythical Pownce site. Yes, you'd better believe it.