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Back in December 2008, Six Apart acquired Pownce and promptly shut it down. Now we can see whether that was a wise move, as Six Apart has launched TypePad Motion, a microblogging service ‘evolved from the Pownce codebase and community’.

It’s written in Python using the Django framework, and the idea is that it’s easy to build and customise, allowing developers to use Typepad for the ‘heavy lifting’, with a flexible and separate layer for creating the design etc.

It allows members to share notes, files, photos , video and audio, and celebrity Typepad users have already integrated the system – examples include Zachary Quinto and Ryan Star if you want to take a look. Content can be cross-posted to both Facebook and Twitter, as you’ve probably come to expect by now!

It’s part of Typepad’s move into proving a cloud service to build social applications, including opening up Typepad’s API’s and providing a TypePad Developer Program for a free beta version of the Typepad API.

While it’s nice to finally see the acquisition of Pownce turn into something meaningful, and also interesting to see where the future lies for Six Apart, the cloud platform and opportunities for developers are actually far more interesting for most people than TypePad Motion. Unless you’re a celebrity, you’re not necessarily going to be getting much conversation generated on a regular basis on your site when compared to using a general community like Twitter etc. And I’m not sure the functionality is enough to make people switch to a paid TypePad account from Blogger or Wordpress.

And there’s been ways to self-host your own microblogging platform for a while – Laconica has now become StatusNet, but remains an open-source microblogging server.

What Six Apart’s move really means is a move more towards the cloud service provider space – the likes of cloud storage providers etc, rather than a move into microblogging.

New site Twingr offers the chance to set up your own microblogging community on a hosted platform – unlike previous options like Laconi.ca, which required you to install the service on your own server.

It seems like a no brainer, but I think there’s one major flaw in the service – critical mass.

One of the successful implentations of Laconica, is Leo Laporte’s TWiT Army, fed from the TWiT Netcast Network, and therefore having enough of a community and interaction to ensure a reasonably constant flow of updates. Meanwhile, there are several options for corporate enterprise solutions, notably Yammer, as a hosted microblogging platform.

But Twingr is external facing, and relies on people wanting to create a group fo sufficient interactivity to seperate itself from the crowd – yet not wanting to host the service, and therefore removing any options to monetise it.

For those small groups, a more general service like Ning would probably offer more scope for interaction, allowing you to upload images and files etc, as well as messaging and forums, meaning a stronger community from a smaller number of participants.

And there’s also no scope to check out and join existing groups, meaning that duplication and confusion may lead to ever smaller splinter groups – is there a need for microblogging for a group of 5 friends who already communicate via IM, Twitter, Facebook etc?

Having said that, if you’re interested, here’s the introductory video – and if you do use it, I’d be really interested in hearing how you get on:

Well, I expressed reservations about how many organisations would find use from Techcrunch 50 winner Yammer, and have a strange feeling that in many cases I might be proved right.

For example, the corporate Yammer group I’m in has 11 members, a few unanswered invites, and a three day gap between posts. Three days should not pass between posts on a microblog, particularly when it was only me posting for the last four days! And that’s despite a few of my usual web geek colleagues popping up.

Compare that to my Tweetstats, despite being pretty busy over the last few days. Part of the reason is that, like Johnny Five in Short Circuit, I need input. Yammer almost seems like a training pool before venturing into the Olympic pool with the grown-ups on Twitter. And that’s regardless of the fact Yammer has opened up it’s API.

There’s quite an interesting post by Chris Brogan on how the Twhirl client support for the open source, on your own servers Twitter, Laconi.ca, means that Yammer is irrelevant.

Incidentally, after Del.icio.us became delicious.com, it seems really strange to see identi.ca, laconi.ca, present.ly (the other corporate microblogging offering) etc!

I was going to use the Twit (This Week In Tech) Army example of self-hosted microblogging, but with comedy timing, the site appears to be down!