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Comment by reedlaw | Hacker News Reader

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?

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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.

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

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