Pownce was a free social networking and micro-blogging site started by Internet entrepreneurs Kevin Rose, Leah Culver, and Daniel Burka. Pownce was centered on sharing messages, files, events, and links with friends. The site launched on June 27, 2007, and was opened to the public on January 22, 2008. On December 1, 2008, Pownce announced that it had been acquired by blogging company Six Apart, and that the service would soon shut down.

Its launch, on June 27, 2007, was covered by Wired,Business Week,Webware, and the San Francisco Chronicle, with most of the coverage focusing on Rose, known for his involvement in Digg, Revision3 and TechTV. Due to this media exposure, invitations for Pownce were in high demand and were being sold on sites such as eBay.

On October 30, 2007, Pownce launched their public API. The developers have also created a Pownce API Google Group. Originally, it was primarily for discussing the release of the API, but it later served to gather feedback and help developers. On November 12, 2007 Pownce launched a custom theme editor for Pro users. They also added eight more preset themes for non pro users to use. On December 20, 2007 Pownce launched a mobile version of their service. This version could be accessed from a variety of mobile devices at m.pownce.com.

Leah Culver (born November 5, 1982) is a programmer.

Culver is a 2006 computer science graduate of the University of Minnesota. In 2007, she co-founded the micro-blogging site Pownce, acquired by Six Apart in December 2008. She left Six Apart in February 2010. She co-founded Convore, focused on real time chat in 2011. In 2012, Convore added a new product, Grove.io which focuses on hosted real-time chat for companies and announced that Convore service will be discontinued on April 1, 2012.

Culver was named among the Most Influential Women in Web 2.0 by Fast Company Magazine in November 2008.

Daniel Burka (born December 17, 1978 in Canada) is best known as the creative director for website Digg. He is also a founding partner at the web design company silverorange, based in Charlottetown, Prince Edward Island, Canada.

In January 2008, Daniel co-founded the social networking service Pownce. Pownce was acquired by Six Apart on December 1, 2008 and the site was shut down on December 15, 2008 due to stagnant growth and lack of revenue. In September 2009, Daniel announced that he was leaving Digg to join the gaming startup Tiny Speck, started by Flickr co-founder Stewart Butterfield. In April 2011, Daniel announced that he was leaving Tiny Speck to join as co-founder of Milk with Kevin Rose.

In March 2012 Kevin Rose posted that the Milk team (Daniel Burka, Chris Hutchins, Joshua Lane and Kevin Rose) was joining Google.