Here's Why People Are Backing App.net

Any time I can transition a service that is important to me to one in which <i>I</i> am the customer, I grab that opportunity quickly.<p>I'd happily pay gmail $10/month for mail in which I was the customer, and not the advertisers. $4/month for a user supported twitter environment sounds like a bargain - particularly as all the people I suspect I want to "follow" (or whatever the join.app.net terminology will be) - have already pledged their support for app.net.

(I'm saying this from a regular user's perspective and not developer): First of all, what's boggling my mind about this app.net thingy is the vague pitch and description. They should explain themselves first as "a paid social network where users own their own data and without any ad disturbance". Then they can elaborate more stuff. I really had hard time to comprehend the importance of this yet-another-social network and spent a lot of time reading others' people blog/HN posts just to understand what it is all about.<p>Secondly, I see why they charge for it for access; I mean, we are customers when we pay for it. I get it. However, I still don't think people are willing to pay for it. Social network will forever (well may be not, but we'll see) be free because when the stuff is free, we can be sure that we can allure our close friends, relatives, or whoever in our circles to join the social network, thus the social network itself. Even more so when regular users are pretty content with the existing free social networks we have. If there are less users in a social network, the less motivation any developer to develop application on its platform.

<a href="https://join.app.net/" rel="nofollow">https://join.app.net/</a><p>People aren't backing join.app.net. Are they really going to find 300k in a week, when they have raised only just half that after such a long time?

App.net strikes me as a half-measure. It's still a centralized system with one company acting ultimately as a gatekeeper.<p>I want a twitter that acts more like email, on open, distributed systems that leave me in full ownership of my own content. I see very little reason for something like Twitter to go through a centralized party this way.

I backed this almost immediately, and expected them to be a lot closer to the goal than they are now (still more than $300,000 off with only seven days to go). I'm very surprised with the apparent lack of resonance with the idea from people around here.<p>So what are some of the reasons you aren't backing?

I don't think this project will work due to several inherent economic factors. If I understand correctly app.net takes a free service (twitter, fb) has removed the best features of those services and then wants to charge money for that product. Dalton has put himself in the position of a reverse browser war which doesn't seem very viable to me.

They could run it from a non-profit instead of a private company. Would be an interesting experiment!

I like Twitter. I don't mind the ads. And Twitter is close to letting us download our own archived tweets: <a href="http://searchengineland.com/twitter-tweet-archive-tool-coming-128537" rel="nofollow">http://searchengineland.com/twitter-tweet-archive-tool-comin...</a><p>If ads interrupted my experience, then maybe it would become a pain point worth addressing or paying for. Until then, I'll stick with the free, ad-supported Twitter.

It seems like a weird decision that they don't stick to the 140-character limit.