RIP Pownce, you were the Twitter competitor that just couldn’t make it into Twitter’s league.

As noted on Six Apart’s blog, Pownce was purchased for its team and technology, but the service will close on December 15.

Pownce launched in June of 2007 and opened to the public earlier this year, with the Six Apart team saying that they “have a lot of respect for what [the Pownce] team has done and believe we share a common vision about making the Internet more social.

Pownce co-founder Leah Culver said at the Pownce blog that: “We’re bittersweet about shutting down the service but we believe we’ll come back with something much better in 2009. We love the Pownce community and we will miss you all.

“We’re very happy that Six Apart wants to invest in growing the vision that we the founders of Pownce believe so strongly in and we’re very excited to take our vision to all of Six Apart’s products.

“[Pownce co-founder Mike Malone] and I have joined Six Apart as part of their engineering team and we’re looking forward to being a part of the talented group that has created amazing tools for blogging and publishing.”

Culver continues: “Since we’d like for you to have access to all your Pownce messages, we’ve added an export function. Visit pownce.com/settings/export/ to generate your export file. You can then import your posts to other blogging services such as Vox, TypePad, or WordPress.”

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The Six Apart team says at its blog that “We have been impressed not only with the vision for Pownce but the great work of Leah Culver and Mike Malone and are very happy that they will be joining us.

“We’re also very excited to welcome [Digg co-founder] Kevin Rose and Daniel Burka as advisers to Six Apart.

“The Pownce team and Six Apart share the same passion for social blogging and we’re really proud to have them on board.”

“For Pownce users, we are very sorry the site will be closing.

“We welcome you to join us on Vox - Leah and Mike are there! - and we hope the Pownce and Vox communities can come together, just as the teams have, towards a better future.

“For the Pownce Pro users, we would like to offer you a free TypePad account for a year. All Pownce users will receive an email with further instructions about exporting content out of Pownce and signing up for Vox or TypePad accounts.”

Six Apart’s blog ends: “We’re planning on doing great things with the help and expertise of the Pownce team, and can’t wait to see all the results of their hard work.”