First screenshots of App.net | Hacker News Reader

First screenshots of App.net

dribbble.com

Since you're just starting, can you maybe go beyond what Twitter does in some obvious ways? We've learned a lot about social media in the last few years and you're still agile enough to incorporate all the lessons and make things significantly better.

As an example, my biggest issue with Twitter is the noise, which mostly stems from a single issue: people I follow don't only share interesting things, but they also share a lot of irrelevant stuff such as pictures from family hike. I'm sure this is interesting to some of their personal friends, but not to me. I want to subscribe to that person on a "coding" stream, and leave the "personal" stream alone. People are multi-dimensional beings with many orthogonal interests; Consider giving them multiple stdouts.

Also, I have to say, 140 is often too little :) Will you also force me to write up the occasional longer post on Google+ and then link to it?

This looks nice, I just hope you won't be a Twitter bare bones re-implementation that I have to pay for. Ideology gives you many points, but I'm not certain about just to what degree a sponsored tweet here and there really bothers me.

As someone who doesn't use Facebook, Twitter, G+ or other crazy social networks, I must say that for the first time I can see myself using a social network if it was like what you described (i.e. multiple streams).

Though, in practice I don't think it would be as successful as you (and maybe I) hope. People who use twitter want to say something and they want to say it fast; they don't want to stop and think "is what I'm sharing (for example, iOS 6 download links when it comes out) code related, or related to Apple, or work?"...

Duly noted. Thanks for the feedback!

If I made a Twitter clone with a Bootstrap UI, I don't think I could generate much buzz. Kudos to these folks, I suppose.

This seems almost too obvious to mention, but they generated buzz based on their differentiator (business model) before showing any hint of the UI.

I know it is very, very early, but I would have expected more than slightly above Twitter Bootstrap...

These are only the first screenshots of the UI built on the API to show this isn't vaporware. You should follow that dribbble account, because there is much more to come!

It's awesome that App.net is trying to build something new, but I think the Hacker News market is somewhat saturated considering how many articles have been on the front page lately. If people haven't donated by now, I don't think a few screenshots will sway their opinion that much. I'd guess that turning your effort towards other avenues would be a better use of time.

First I'd ever heard of App.net was Siracusa's "Hypercritical" podcast last night. This post on HN reminded me to check it out. I added my support. Just wish someone would do something like this for Path (and all the other web services that I love, but don't want to become the "product")

It's times like this that I realize how much I take HN for granted. Great service. No Ads. Fantastic Community.

Hacker News is an ad for Y Combinator.

I'm sorry but either you see your project more important than it is, or you don't know how to present it. (I think both is true.)

I understand the problems Twitter poses, but what's the problem with Identica?

I have found Identica (Status.NET) to be very slow. Other than that, I dislike the UI.

identi.ca is just a site, a red herring as I explained in the other twitter thread of the day. It runs off the StatusNet platform, a software package in the way wordpress is (as opposed to wordpress.com, a site.)

Even more important is the OStatus protocol, which if adopted, would allow decentralization and federation with other sites that speak the same protocol.

I'm sure I'll sound horribly impolite, but why did you choose such an Apple-esque style?

You all could be a revolutionary team, but as far as I can see the UI is not a revolution at all. I'm not telling you that a drastically innovative interface is needed, but to be future-proof you should go fully-digital, if not something farther.

The interface must be perfect, cool, useful, built tightly around the user and functions, not nice.

Thanks for the feedback. I know I probably sound redundant at this point, but we are still very early in the development this product. These screenshots are meant to show a working prototype built on our API and also to spark your imagination!

@comex for example expressed his likes about the UI, do not take my opinions as simple critics about the style. But looks like an UI that every UI designer could come up to. Well, it's pretty and curated. Thinking about it you have to account for customers/users with strong expectation from such a service, it's not that stupid to go for the well-trodden path.

I hope you're not going to be flooded by a too common design...

As another data point, I rather like this UI, and think I would prefer it over a "fully-digital" one. To each his own...

bikeshed. I for one hope that they are taking a bottom up approach to design, rather than a top down.

That was exactly what I thought when I saw that UI. I'm excited about their project, I'd seriously like to see some serious innovation there.

Wow. The fact that some teaser screenshots are getting so much attention is great news for App.net.

Honestly I wasn't sure about Dalton's prospects at first -- but with the developer community hanging on to his every word, he might have a shot.

I still remember the days when Twitter was just a bunch of geeks tweeting about how much they hated MySpace. Now they can update their App.net statuses about how much they hate Facebook.

Looks pretty.

I definitely want to support entrepreneurs and App.net. But, quite frankly I don't see how they are going to build a user base.

That's the beauty of how we are going about this. If our campaign succeeds, there will be at least 9,999 like-minded individuals with you on day one!

I do want to support you guys.

But just having 10K people who want App.net successful is not enough to get me to put in $50 (or to even try it out for free).

Now, if this a community of a 100 entrepreneurs, I might be more interested. Perhaps, you guys need channels for various groups or something.

My point is that I cannot yet find an excuse to see why you will be successful and therefore would want to bet anything on you. Help me find that excuse :-)

I understand your uncertainty, however I encourage you to search twitter for people who have pledged their support (we have highlighted a handful on join.app.net). I think you'll be pleasantly surprised!

A community of 10k people willing to pay $50 sounds like a solid start.

Maybe, maybe not. A $50 investment isn't sufficient to guarantee trying it, let alone sustained use.

Builds twitter clone... uses twitter bootstrap

Now that's #ironic

Is this a screenshot of a Photoshop mockup, static HTML + CSS, or a live app running on a server somewhere?

The screenshots are of a live app built on our API.

Cool :)

It seems like the name of this project alone is enough to guarantee traction problems. Having a searchable name these days counts for more than having a name that is clever, short, appealing, or anything else.

status.net has the perfect name, yet little traction.

Why don't they just build on http://status.net? Hasn't this all been done before? http://identi.ca

because they have an ego, and want to take credit and praise for creating it. They dun care if the idea becomes a reality without them being involved.

What happened to the clean branding that the current splash/Kickstarter campaign page have? The textures here are really distracting, even in 400x300.

Thanks for the feedback. The app is nowhere near finished, but we just wanted to post initial screenshots of a live app built on our API.

Am i looking at a twitter clone running stock version of twitter bootstrap? A bit ironic.

I think that whatever comes out of this campaign (i.e. certain failure), the team of app.net should continue developing this service bc the need for it will emerge one day in the future. It's just that right now, this point hasn't been reached yet. But being able to move first when the time has come is a good thing. Right now they should, instead of associating this project with failure, provide the service for free but be clear about the fact that they will start charging for it at some point in the future. Or maybe offer a free and a paid plan with the former being limited in possible API calls.

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