I supported App.net with $50/year, here’s why | Hacker News Reader

I supported App.net with $50/year, here’s why

andrewchen.co

40 pointsDanielRibeiro31 comments

After watching the video, from a consumer's perspective I have literally no idea what the service is going to do. Is it sharing things with my friends? Is it a clone of twitter that is more developer friendly but that costs money to use? Is it a new HTTP? Apologies if I'm being dense but I really don't understand.

Me too. What is it?

Is it kind of facebook or twitter? >he mentioned it is paid? So how you acquire customers?

Is it kind of streamed timeline as a servers?

If he can't tell me what it does in 1 min, I never ever gonna pre-order or back it up.

"App.net has the potential to be something more fundamental, like the web (HTTP) or email (SMTP)."

Unfortunately, I have my reservations about this ... both of those protocols are, by definition, decentralized. They don't depend on a specific 3rd party provider as is the case with app.net (unless I'm misunderstanding their proposal). That definitely seems like the biggest weakness with app.net, especially for people who want it to become a ubiquitous piece of infrastructure.

Don't get me wrong, I'm excited for app.net, and I hope they really deliver ... I've had several ideas where a generic 'feed' would be quite useful.

It reminded me of this comic: http://xkcd.com/927/

Add one more private feed company to the pile.

"App.net has the potential to be something more fundamental, like the web (HTTP) or email (SMTP)"

To do this, wouldn't you need to abandon the centralized server? Neither of these services are paid products (the hosting is paid).

A big reason that services like twitter, Facebook, and linkedin work at all is that they are centralized. Value is derived from all the accounts and data being in one place. Arguably THE reason that HTTP and SMTP work is that they are decentralized. Anyone can implement the protocol on any server.

I don't really see how app.net can straddle this divide. From what I can tell, the current aim is to be a centralized service that has an api. That still sounds to me like a paid twitter with a less restrictive api. Seems to me the focus needs to actually be on an open protocol. One that any server can implement to display a feed[1].

[1] RSS? Maybe with some more bells and whistle.

Another thought:

Seems like what App.net should be doing is designing and promoting an open protocol for feeds and then become global indexer of those feeds. Of course, Google might give them some trouble. I am sure Google is chomping at the bit to index the next evolution of the web.

Am I correct that App.net is to Twitter what Vimeo is to Youtube? That is, a paid service with no ads. If so, why not just launch the service like any other web company? They can bootstrap with paying first customers. As a web developer myself I know how expensive a project like this can be, but I don't see why I should pledge before the service is even launched. How do I know I'll even like what they build?

It's always hard to find a market for your product. This is one way to make sure there is a market before building a product.

So founders don't know if there is a market for this app, and users suppose to know that they are part of the market without even knowing what the product is?

True, but it's not a competitive advantage in this age of countless social networks to ask for $50 before launch. And to overcome the bias towards non-paid services there will have to be some serious advantages. If it's just Twitter with a better API I can only conceive paying $5 a year for personal use.

I am not so sure that is the case. Kevin Kelly wrote about having 1000 true fans. I think his argument works here too.

http://www.kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2008/03/1000_true_fan...

If you think about how Twitter needs to reach 100 of millions if not billions of users to possibly become sustainable, or figure out how to squeeze more money out of the users they have. Then compare that to the App.net proposal. Especially the part about making the user the customer. Then you can see how having a small set of faithful users might be more sustainable.

Dalton wrote more about this in his post: http://daltoncaldwell.com/an-audacious-proposal

disclaimer: I work for App.net, but this post represents my own views.

Like this: http://pleasefund.us/projects/chuntle

The problem is a service like this lives and dies by the network effect. Without enough people using it, it's not attractive to new people. Services like Vimeo don't have that problem because they provide the same value to paying members regardless of how many other paying members there are.

Let's say you want to create an ultimate network. Ask for $10K per month from each member and throw a party each month which will be host by Alicia Keys, Adele and many more top notch singers in the world. There will be 100 or so members. Aren't you going to be attracted in that 100 ? Not 10 gazillion. Only 100.

Sure we can't compare this exclusive network with App.net but believe me, Twitter having gazillions of people does not add any value to me. It makes my day harder, because every day more shit is produced in Twitter and Twitter is focusing on # of people vs # of advertisement clicks. They don't care about me. This is the old T.V model and I don't have a cable at home any more.

I'm entrepreneur and a programmer. If App.Net brings in VCs, marketers, entrepreneurs and good programmers I'm in. I will pay $10-$20 p/m to be in that network. App.net will care about what their users think. They have to.

It's not about the # of people, it's about the value they create; the content they write, the links they share, the conversations they have.

I don't care if 2M 16 year old Justin Bieber fans joining to the network. No value to me.

I watched the video 5 times yesterday and 2 times today, I still have no idea what the product is, only thing I know is that it is a paid service with no ads, I feel like idiot.

Have you read this http://daltoncaldwell.com/an-audacious-proposal

Even after that it's still not clear. So it's a messaging service without ads? Uhh... So what? How is this audacious or fundamental to the web in any way, shape or form? It just sounds like a Twitter rip off with a different business model. I'm not even sure what the business model is supposed to be except that it's 'not ads'. What a confusing pile of confusion this project is.

Hi, OP here. I failed on the title, it's $50/year not month. I fixed it on my blog but now it's too late :(

Looking at how much they raised until now, I'd say that if they don't have some powerful communication relays planned for the next 2 weeks they won't make it to $500k.

I don't know whether this is due to the fact that they're not on Kickstarter or that the project is just not viral/exciting/relevant enough.

Isn't this kinda the goal of Status.net?

This is what I don't understand. Status.net is a great, open, decentralized/federated platform but we still have developers reinventing the wheel. I see why I should support App.net when they haven't said anything about how open their platform will be.

At first I was skeptical, but look at how successful Facebook's Open Graph is for a range of "social" platforms. Facebook is a pain to develop for, so if app.net is significantly easier it would make me think twice about integrating into Facebook first.

The reason why you develop for FB first is because they have the users. Are you going to develop for app.net first if the users are not using app.net? I think it is really risky to build ontop of an API that has few users. What if you dedicate the time integrating app.net and then 10 months later they decide to fold. I integrated picplzs API and a few months later they decided to fold the service. Complete waste of time.

I hope they really do an awesome job on implementing this. Nobody wants another OpenID or Diaspora (not that they were bad projects, but it just shows how disconnected hackers can be from masses). I would hate this thing to end up as a hacker's toy.

If we're talking real-time feed... I think app.net's idea is a step in the right direction. However decentralized architecture will take time. The first step is to create a generic feed experience.

We are actually starting to roll out http://friendbox.io - A real-time social platform for apps. Ultimately aiming to create an instant feed for any mobile game or app. Will be open source so you could design and share UI's, flows etc.

Don't back us, just join us :) https://developer.friendbox.io/signup

> (Note that I don’t actually know what it’s going to be, I’m just writing about what I hope it will be!)

I wonder how many other people are kvelling about what they hope it will be.

> Today, feeds are owned by companies, but what if they don’t have to be?

Well, wouldn't App.net be the big company?

So what is bad in advertising! do you think they are harm! or you dont' like! do you advertise! or you dont advertise at all for your site! without advertising how you get s ome traction!

Your communication style! is very unusual! even questions end with an exclamation! am I the only one who's confused!

! misunderstood!

:) surprising?!

$50? With all the cake he's making? Maybe there really is a depression out there.

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