The verdict is in: The Pownce API kicks Twitter's ass 

Sorry Ev and Biz and Jack, but they got your number over there at Pownce.

I've been asking Twitter to support payloads for months now, and now I have what I was asking for, but it came from Pownce, and it's beautifully implemented, far more than what I was asking Twitter for.

Let me state the problem.

I was at the Apple store in Palo Alto today, and I snap a picture on my iPhone and shoot it up to Flickr. I have an agent running on my server that watches for new pictures on Flickr. When it detects one, it posts a link to the picture on Twitter. Here's what that looks like.

http://twitter.com/davewiner/statuses/765476227

It's great because it works, not because it's pretty because it's not pretty. See the URL there. I'd much rather have it be an icon. That was the plan for the Payloads feature.

Earlier today I heard that Pownce has version 2 of their API that includes posting new messages. A message can have a link. So I wrote a script to test that out. After three tries it worked. Here's the equivalent to the Twitter post above, in Pownce.

http://pownce.com/davew/notes/1442724/

Look at how beautiful it is. Exceeded my wildest dreams. Oh man. It looks better than it does on Flickr!

Twitter was my first love, but now I'm seriously considering a fling with Pownce.

PS: If you can't read the Pownce post, here's a screen shot.