The launch of Pownce and the big response it received from bloggers and users alike was so full of different explanations and definitions of this new tool that it’s safe to say that no one actually knows what it is.

Some compared it with e-mail; others declared it a mini-blogging service, a chat, a social network, a tumble logging service, or a forum. Personally, I thought it’s most akin to IM, but it doesn’t matter: the wide array of responses proves that all these services have converged and that the differences between them have become seriously blurred.

This is a classic case of forest obscuring the proverbial trees. Let’s take a step back and look what these services do and what are their main characteristics. They’re obviously all about communication. This communication can be:

1) one to one
2) one to many
3) many to many

Furthermore, it can happen in:

a) real time
b) with a delay

And finally, it can be:

x) permanent (which means the same conversation can always be found)
y) temporary (which means that although the contents of the communication might be logged, it’s not directly reachable in a fixed place)

By this categorization, instant messaging would be 1ay; e-mail is 1bx, but it can also be 2bx or 3bx, while blogs and all its varieties - tumblelogs, miniblogs - pretty much fall into the 2bx category.

Of course, with time, these services got more and more features, and now each and every one of them pretty much overlaps all three categories of communication; from blogs having chat widgets, to chat having private, logged channels, it’s hard to tell which is which.

The answer is, of course, not important - who cares if some application is covering several fields? The question is: what we really need, and how do we, the users, minimize the clutter and organize all this into a coherent communication system.

Now, going back to Pownce, it’s easy to see why it’s so confusing. It’s web-based, which makes it akin to a blog (or a miniblog), however it allows for all three types of communication. Basically, it only doesn’t have one thing: it does not happen in real time. Hence my enthusiasm about the service.

Unlike many users who have gotten used to communicate in dozens of different niches, I like having all my eggs in one basket. I’d like to be able to chat in real time, with one or more people, privately or publicly, securely if I choose to, exchange files and links with friends, and have all that readily available, and easy to search through and filter.

So, to answer the question from the title: yes, for me it’s all the same thing. And I want it all in one. Think it can’t all be done in one application? I beg to differ. Pownce still has a long way to go, but it’s on the right track. Many IM services, like Gtalk, could probably easily add some features to come closer to this ideal.

Don’t get me wrong: it doesn’t mean that I expect all these applications (and there are literally thousands that fall into the above categories) to have it all. Some of them will probably always excel at some particular feature and outshine others with it. But - I’ve got to admit - I don’t have time for all of them. I will ultimately choose very few as my means of communication, simply because I don’t want my communication to be fragmented over dozens of different services. Thus, the one that offers more than any other application will be my choice.