Right now, Pownce (prounounced the same as "pounce") is the new kid on the block that's way cooler than your old MySpace or Facebook was. And they're doing that oh-so-hip invite thing to get you drooling. But will it take off? I don't know, but I'm kinda interested in trying it.

Many are considering this to be more like Twitter or Jaiku than a Facebook. Well, at least for now. But this does a couple other cool things. First of all, you can set up groups of friends and only send messages to these friends. Otherwise, you can send a message to only one friend or any couple friends you want. Or, of course, they can be public. Second, you can send files to friends. No, they're not as attachments, they're stored on Pownce's servers for your friends to get. Third, not only is there the website, but there's a really nice application made of the new Adobe Air (formerly Apollo) technology, so you can run Pownce on your Mac or Win desktop.

From the look at the specs, this stuff is also using the coolest in Open Source technologies. Of course, it's running Debian, Apache and MySQL, but it's also running on the new Django framework for Python. Plus, it's got everything a Web 2.0 start-up team needs, from Kevin Rose, the inventor of digg to a designer who almost defines the "Web 2.0" look and a blogger chick who does most of the development.

What's going to stop them? Not much, except that you know everyone is sending each other music and movies and the suits aren't going to let that last too long.