I didn't realise until this article that Alpha != App.net. Now that I do, a couple of problems spring to mind:<p>* For startups, user acquisition often remains the biggest hurdle to success. Here they have to sting the user for a monthly subscription even to try the app. Asking people to open their wallets is going to massively reduce the people a startup get through the doors.<p>* There are billions of active users on Facebook. It is the de-facto platform for interaction for most people. Why does the user want to change? Saying "but now you won't be the product, the platform will be" won't make clear to most users what advantage their might be. They'll respond "so I have to pay to be connected to less friends?".<p>* The two above problems are cyclical and exasperate one another.<p>I like the idea, I just think there are a lot of problems that are going to get in its way.
I still think in the long run Tent is the superior approach. App.net will do what every company does, and it doesn't matter how unevil they seem.<p>Open protocols like SMTP, HTTP, XMPP and Tent are the way to go in the future.
In the Facebook era, I think people have a hard time seeing the value of paying for ad-free models like App.net where free alternatives are available. Even Wikipedia has a hard time raising enough money through through their "just beg for it" revenue model, and they generate a significant amount of user ire in the process. 99% of their users would much rather see ads than put up with their invasive virtual panhandling.<p>While the motivation behind such models may be noble in the eyes of their developers, the whole "ads are evil" notion simply doesn't make sense to most of the general population. Accordingly, most of these models are doomed for failure. If my goal is maximum distribution, I will always choose to develop for a free platform.
Making end users pay is a huge barrier to entry for startups. Not all can afford it. And App.net is there to play zookeeper, and could shut them down if they do anything out of bounds. For users this is great but for startups it's hugely dangerous. So app.net has a marketplace problem : to overcome this they need to be huge (think Apple App Store huge) and to be App Store huge they need the startups and users.<p>Disclaimer : We build hull.io. we think that developers need stay in control of the data and responsible for themselves for this to work.
The value prop for App.net (in my opinion) relates to User Privacy. This all ties back to the "You are the Product" model of existing Social Networks that leverage the Advertising Industry as their core (or secondary) revenue model. The implication here is that the User's Privacy is being subverted during the process of collecting and storing User Related information/data for 3rd party entities, which are usually Advertising related. This information is then commonly used to provide more personal or relevant Ad's, which in theory should increase ROI / Conversion. Not everyone will agree with the implication stated above, as a Privacy Policy does explain this process, and thus it is assumed that the User is Aware of this (and therefore must agree with it to be using the Service).<p>With this said, the Value Prop for App.net is to build your App on a Platform that leverages a Business Model that does not relate to User Privacy in any way. In theory, this should allow you to build your App in an Ecosystem that provides more respect to User Privacy. Furthermore, the User Experience should be better because there are no Ad's interrupting the consumption of content and/or taking up screen real estate.<p>But here's the Kicker; Even though I do see this as a positive thing, and I believe I do understand the value prop, I still don't see it as a viable alternative to App Development in a world where the Freemium Distribution Model has skewed the User's Perception of "worth". So while the App.net Model does provide some cool and interesting alternatives relating to User Privacy and User Experience, it also (on the flip side) makes it impossible to release a "Free" version of your App, simply because Users must pay to use the Platform it's built on. And for me this is a big deal, because most of the feedback I get during customer surveys and validation indicates that they want a 'Try before you Buy' type of Model. Most Users simply won't pay for something when there are free alternatives available. The end result being, if you Develop on App.net, you are Developing specifically for App.net, as your ability to acquire new organic users outside of the App.net ecosystem is greatly compromised.<p>Even with this said, I commend Dalton Caldwell for taking a stand and building something new that provides alternatives to other Platforms. If I ever find myself developing a Paid App targeted towards a curated User-base of Users that don't mind paying for stuff, then I'll definitely be looking at App.net
I find people's attitudes on HN difficult to decipher on this issue. Run this search on Google:<p>posthaven site:news.ycombinator.com<p>the full URL:<p><a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=posthaven+site%3Anews.ycombinator.com&aq=f&oq=posthaven+site%3Anews.ycombinator.com&aqs=chrome.0.57.9919j0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/search?q=posthaven+site%3Anews.ycombi...</a><p>and for App.net:<p><a href="https://www.google.com/search?q=posthaven+site%3Anews.ycombinator.com&aq=f&oq=posthaven+site%3Anews.ycombinator.com&aqs=chrome.0.57.9919j0&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8#sclient=psy-ab&q=app.net+site:news.ycombinator.com&oq=app.net+site:news.ycombinator.com&gs_l=serp.3...61160.62641.0.62875.7.7.0.0.0.2.235.742.3j3j1.7.0...0.0...1c.1.9.psy-ab.BS2fg9sGsjM&pbx=1&bav=on.2,or.r_qf.&bvm=bv.45512109,d.dmQ&fp=e05dc11bf3592300&biw=1047&bih=644" rel="nofollow">https://www.google.com/search?q=posthaven+site%3Anews.ycombi...</a><p>On HN, those 2 sites are roughly equal, or possibly PostHaven gets a little bit more attention. Why is that?<p>Both sites offer micro-blogging. App.net has been around longer and has devoted more resources to building an API that will allow 3rd party developers to do interesting things with its micro-blogging service.<p>You can post images to App.net.<p>You can post long-form essays to App.net.<p>You can post short tweets to App.net.<p>App.net has over 20 3rd party apps already, which offers a kind of social proof from 3rd party developers that PostHaven does not yet have.<p>So why is it that people are willing to talk about PostHaven, and give its model some serious consideration, while dismissing App.net?<p>App.net offers everything that PostHaven offers, but App.net is much further developed.
There's a bit of a chicken and egg problem here: If app.net was already well established among users then it'd be great to tap into that userbase, and users would be looking for more apps. Unfortunately, before that happens it's pretty hard to imagine that an app developer would be able or want to introduce their users to both 1) their app, and 2) that they need to pay for a separate service in addition. Sounds like it'd be complicated and confusing to users. Perhaps if alpha.app.net were to take off that would solve the problem, but since they're focusing on a platform and not the app, that doesn't seem as likely.
I realized why I want App.net or something like it (tent.io?). Maybe my answer can help someone else wrap their head around why they want it.<p>I have been kicking around this idea for a utility to help people communicate in cooperatives and other small organizations. (Yes, I'm planning groupware. Forgive me.) These organizations tend to need much less immediate communication, and much more broadcasting. They also tend to be susceptible to stress because house business <i>is</i> personal sometimes.<p>People broadcast policy proposals, ask for rides, ask questions about specific topics like kitchen maintenance, etc. One thing that people seem to prefer, also, is the ability to organize, sort, filter on their end.<p>I was a junior in HS with dialup when Twitter debuted at SXSW, so I didn't get it then; now, though, I see that just about all asynchronous communication is tantamount to merging, filtering, accumulating, and transforming lists / streams. Thanks to optional metadata, you can use the same transport to allow applications to communicate. Or let applications read the human data. Etc.<p>And App.net is that from what I gather. Maybe it was obvious to everyone but infrastructure like this is potentially a valuable commodity. It's not just about micro-blogging. There will, hopefully, be many awesome applications of sending data and queries out into the ether and things getting to where they need to be.
I'm really trying to understand app.net, I used it for a little while and browsed the apps people had made for it but they all just seemed like mobile and desktop clients to send status updates to alpha. It also seems as though you need an app.net account to use an app built with their API which seems very limiting to me in terms of the type of markets you can reach. What's the incentive for someone to use app.net's API over something such as hull.io?
<i>The value of the App.net from a developer perspective is that it’s an out-of-the-box social network, platform, and API that allows developers to quickly bring their ideas to life. I think that if App.net is going to be successful, they need to sell this vision apart from Alpha, and make it clear that App.net is where startup founders should build their next world-changing product, whether it’s built on the web, on Android, or iOS.<p>When pitching developers, App.net needs to focus on making it clear that they are offering a development platform for applications, providing much of the foundation required to build apps like Foursquare, Instagram, and Path. The built-in community also helps to decrease the barriers for rapid user adoption.</i><p>What the heck does that mean? I still have no idea what App.net is apart from a paid alternative to free social networks that frees users from ads. I think their marketing efforts should start by not speaking in such vague terms that offer no insight into what benefits might be derived and just come clean. If crafting that message is exceedingly difficult to do, I think that speaks volumes about the value proposition.
I sort of understand the reasoning behind App.net, but I'm worried that its developer focus will prevent many average users from joining the service and prevent it from really providing the social layer that's necessary to actually build something network-driven out of it.<p>The reason Facebook and Twitter are popular platforms are not necessarily because of their particular features or user data but because of the massive networks they represent. By tying our products to their ecosystem, you're able to leverage their technologies and data while still having a large enough addressable market. This is definitely not the case with App.net (at least so far).<p>I think what App.net might have that's unique is an active developer community (as opposed to a mass of average users), so perhaps it can standalone as a developer-friendly social platform, but I'm questionable as to whether anything of mass market value can come out of it, especially on the B2C side.
It seems that he is suggesting app.net to build two-sided market for social apps: users on one side and developers on the other side.<p>Sounds great - once they build a successful marketplace. But until then, the value proposition is not currently compelling. As a user - ad-free is not in itself compelling enough (yes, ad-free with a user base similar to twitter or facebooks is compelling), and as a developer their user base is again too small to matter.<p>They likely need to figure out which group is more important. If it is users, they likely need to focus on a killer app, or a killer community (perhaps by focusing the group they are targeting). If developers are more important, and they don't have a user base that is large enough to be compelling, perhaps they need to pith a different pricing model to developers (something to the effect of free to build apps and $1/user with these 100 social features).
It's more like Salesforce.com than it is like Twitter in terms of business model -- that's interesting.<p>Will it work though?<p>SFDC started out with a product that had clear enough value to sell seats at $60+ a month and then there was a large market for apps built on top of their platform. And note that if you sell somebody an app in Salesforce, you're adding something to their recurring bill.<p>App.net sounds like an "all you can eat" service in terms of back-end hardware and software, a bit like cable TV, in fact, it's at the low end of that price range.<p>It may be very possible to build something interesting on here but so far all I see are a number of instant messaging clients, particularly for the Mac.<p>Show me a tool that can be used to build a social system that gets people to do something that they otherwise don't do then I'll be impressed!
If you still don't get what it's about, just take a few minutes to join and explore the different applications that are available. At the risk of appearing spammy, here are some invites to the free tier:<p><a href="https://join.app.net/p/nybhfhmhms" rel="nofollow">https://join.app.net/p/nybhfhmhms</a>
<a href="https://join.app.net/p/rgvngqrnhh" rel="nofollow">https://join.app.net/p/rgvngqrnhh</a>
<a href="https://join.app.net/p/chvcvtwbjf" rel="nofollow">https://join.app.net/p/chvcvtwbjf</a>
<a href="https://join.app.net/p/dgccmgvzyx" rel="nofollow">https://join.app.net/p/dgccmgvzyx</a>