Everyones favorite Twitter comparison application, Pownce, is set to leave its private beta tonight at midnight for the public spotlight.

As I’ve noted numerous times, I like the idea of Pownce a lot. It reminds me less of a straight-up Twitter clone and more of a Tumblr meets Twitter application; there is simply a lot more you can do on Pownce than you can on Twitter. That said, despite its 150,000 beta testers, the main problem I still have with Pownce is the seemingly complete and utter lack of use. I have 150+ friends on Pownce right now, yet my main screen still has messages that are 5 hours old. On Twitter? Try 10 minutes old. Max.

A new desktop client built on Adobe Air may help that – as may the ability to now import friends from Digg, Flickr, Twitter, Facebook and the like. Also giving me hope is a new ‘Featured Powncers’ area coming tonight to help highlight some of the established users that new users might be interested in following – something I know Twitter could use for anyone new who signs up.

The other really useful application I think Pownce could have is something I wrote about last month: mobile access to event posting. This feature on the mobile version of Pownce (which I think even in early alpha stage is better than the mobile Twitter), could be great for something like impromptu meetings or simple meetups. The version of Pownce that launches tonight is also said to further emphasis the ‘events’ aspect of the site, which should be an important social layer to help differentiate itself from Twitter.

So with Pownce now going public and the potential for access to users to be equal now with Twitter, it’ll be interesting to see how the two co-exist. Both seem to be out there wooing developers to use their platforms, but is there room for both in our increasingly crowded social networking lives?