Dalton Caldwell: App.net is not Vaporware | Hacker News Reader

Dalton Caldwell: App.net is not Vaporware

daltoncaldwell.com

131 pointsauston118 comments

I think it's going to be very hard to pull this off. I feel like Dalton is living in a bubble of people who are willing to pay to avoid ads. But for most everyone else, a social network with ads (that are not TOO annoying) is much better than one that ask for your money. He might be able to find enough people to pay to become a profitable business but I doubt he will ever reach facebook or twitter like scale. And if it doesn't scale, the paying members will leave eventually.

I agree with your analysis, but it's worth noting that size/scale aren't everything. Hacker News isn't the size of Reddit (or Digg at its height) and I'm kind of glad about that.

If App.Net ends up being the 'Hacker News Twitterlike' service, is that a success or failure?

The difference is that Hacker News doesn't need to turn a profit. app.net has a number of running costs that need to be serviced and, to do that, people have to want to pay. There is a minimum threshold that is required to keep users with the service, otherwise it feels empty.

Examples are Google Wave vs Google+. The former felt empty and pointless, while the latter can be interesting because of the number of users, albeit they may not be people you know.

It's not a good example though, because no one knew what the hell to use Wave for anyway. It was just a conglomeration of product features that had no clear place to fit into existing workflows.

Twitter on the other hand fits in everywhere. People just love to crap out little 160 character nuggets in between everything else they do all day long.

Is it such a bad example? I'm not sure what app.net is. A "real-time social feed" that I pay for? As a developer (his primary audience), what does this do for me over Twitter or Facebook?

Won't get kicked off.

"And if it doesn't scale, the paying members will leave eventually."

Could you explain why you think so? I would think that the fact that it is a paid service will reduce the amount of noise in the system and a lot of people would value a social network with less noise.

what exactly constitutes 'noise' in a social network? if you're talking about the issue of having lots of stuff in your feed from people who you are not interested in, there is an easy solution: unfollow or unsubscribe from them! if your concern is more about having specific posts surfaced from people, but not all of them ("I'm interested in Bob's tech posts, but not his cat posts") then this has nothing to do with paid vs free and is a filtering/algorithm problem.

One thing to note is that our funding velocity is not linear, it has been picking up speed. If we can keep the momentum going and spread the word, we are confident that we will hit our goal.

Regarding ads being not too annoying, people are backing app.net because of the larger goal: creating a service where the user is the customer rather than the product. This allows app.net to focus all of its resources on pleasing the user, and ensures app.net will not try to shut down 3rd party developers who are competing for advertising dollars.

To this end, app.net does not need to become twitter-like scale to create a sustainable business.

Would it work if the 3rd-party devs were the customers? I.e. anyone using XYZ's app gets in for free because XYZ company pays the usage fees (out of it's ad revenue). That would avoid app.net trying to shut down services that customers like. It would also improve user adoption since it's free to the user. But how does this model compare to the customer-centric one?

Another model that might be worth trying is pay to send, free to receive. So if people just want to follow Scoble, let Scoble pay for 'em.

Are you suggesting users pay per follower? You've essentially turned it into an advertising platform; which gets us right back where we started only worse (can't get influence at all unless you pay for it)

I think there are crucial differences between Twitter's "tweets + ads" model and the "tweets are ads" model I'm suggesting, but this probably isn't the place to discuss it.

GoTo.Tweet? OverTuritter?

Depends on what you mean by "pull this off." The alpha itself is pretty beefy for the alpha's I've seen. The API isn't stable but it's certainly nothing to sniff at and the web GUI is more realized in a few weeks than twitter was in a few months (learning from others mistakes makes this easier, of course).

Dalton's pretty clear said he's "not trying to kill twitter" see, http://www.quora.com/Twitter-1/Will-app-net-kill-Twitter/ans...

API Access , 400 daily active users and its gonna be a funtastic service for eejits* who like machine learning, personalization etc.

* Me.

I disagree. It's not about the ads directly really. It's about the fact that the ads will dictate the fate of the service. To survive, the service has to go where the customers (which are not the users, but the companies buying ad space) wants it to be. Just look at Twitter: in order to monetize, they will eventually block third party apps from using the service, which is bad for the users, because Twitter's own apps can't compete with many top third party apps.

Looking at the users that are currently using the alpha version you can see that these are mostly tech people - developers, designers, bloggers, artists etc - who are enjoying even the current state, which just has a few hundred users. We don't really mind if the service doesn't scale as Twitter does, that might actually be a good thing. And there are services that proof that paid accounts are a valid and successful way to monetize: look at pinboard.in, for example.

To survive, the service has to go where the customers (which are not the users, but the companies buying ad space) wants it to be.

That is not entirely accurate either. In order to have any customers, even by your definition, twitter must continue to have lots of users. So there is already a checks and balance system of sorts in place such that if twitter goes too far in the direction of addressing advertisers while hurting the users, the users may jump ship causing the advertisers to do the same as well.

The vast majority of Twitter users today use the web interface or Twitter's own apps. These are ordinary people, not tech geeks. They don't care about APIs - they don't even know what that is. Twitter doesn't hurt them by restricting their service to their own apps. It's pretty unlikely that these people will ever want to pay $50 a year for a micro messaging service like app.net or care enough about not being a product, so they will never be the focus of app.net.

Twitter enjoys a tremendous popularity because of all those celebrities using the service. I mean celebrities like Ashton Kutcher, not like John Gruber. And that keeps the masses coming to Twitter. It does turn away the tech folks though, the people who used Twitter in its very beginning and which are now turned away by its politics.

Here is an alternative I humbly suggest (in case you missed it): http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4354148

I listen to the podcasts of precisely six people . Four of those six people have already voiced support for join.app.net ((Dan Benjamin, John Grueber, Marco Armenti, John Siracusa). I expect the other two would join fairly quickly, and, given the "open" nature of join.app.net, I expect anybody who wanted cross-posting from twitter over to join.app.net, wouldn't have much difficulty. Just have the client post on both locations (much like Path posts to both Path and Facebook)

I really only want about a dozen people on Join.App.Net, and most of them are already there. So, for _me_ it just has to scale to twelve people - it just needs to be the right twelve people - and so far it looks good.

Honest question: what stops you from simply browsing a twitter list of those twelve people?

Or, more pragmatically: what incentive do I, a person who doesn't really care about 'openness' and uses Twitter for a billion other reasons anyway, have to pay $50 and subscribe to app.net instead of just following the twitter list of those twelve people?

If you can't figure it out yet.. you are not the target market.

Twitter is fine now, but, over the next few years, will become increasingly polluted, and brought down by the mandates of Twitter Inc. having to be a multi-billion dollar company, and make money off eyeballs. Twitter is _fine_ right now - I can chose my client, I can follow a clean feed - (all of the above are in my feed). There are NO problems whatsoever with twitter, for me, right now. In the next few years, that will likely change. Clients will become restricted, the feed will become polluted, and my eyeballs will be resold.

I like to get ahead of the curve.

I use Path, not Facebook. I don't watch commercial TV w/commercials. And I support app.net. Their business model is pretty straightforward - "The user is the customer, not the advertiser."

I like being the customer. That's why I'm paying $50. It's also why I'll migrate off Path to the first company that comes up with a business model that also foregoes selling my information and attention (While, like twitter, it's pretty close to perfect for me right now, I'm sure Path will go downhill - unless they find some ueber clever low-overhead approach akin to what Craigslist has been able to do.)

The incentives are A) to hedge against future developments of Twitter throwing you under the bus for $0.50 and B) joining a social network of people who explicitly value that network who you believe will have a generally higher signal to noise ration than the unwashed masses.

Today you can follow those 12 people, but if this takes off then it promises a return to the nostalgic '06 and '07 of Twitter when the community was small and everyone there was "interesting". The cognoscenti of tech may well abandon Twitter in favor of this un-walled, membership-only garden.

Now who really should care about this? Certainly not most people. It won't compete with Twitter, but it won't have to because it will have a fraction of the infrastructure costs, and it will avoid the eternal september that plagues every popular free service. This will be a niche product, but if successful it will potentially be highly valuable to that niche, and also it will be quite novel as a paid product of this type has never taken off as far as I know. If you really buy into the hype, you might even think that the success of app.net could signal the high water mark of free services as it becomes apparent just how much better a service can be created when it's paid for directly by users.

I'm not saying I believe any of this, but I do see the potential.

Point of information - the precursor example of a social networking product supported by users might be http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_WELL , which had a good 20 year run.

To be honest, I used Twitter initially because it was interesting to read and be in dialogue with the larger tech community in a way that I might not on, say, my Facebook (very technical discussions, etcetc). I could of course browse a Twitter list of twelve people, but the way I am willing to participate in Twitter changed the moment it became more than a tech ghetto. In fact, Twitter became essentially useless to me on that day. I could really think of worse things happening than another such niche social network emerging... Consolidation, especially of data, is incredibly overrated.

John Siricusa blatantly stated that he funded it before even fully understanding what it was. His support was based on Marco and Grueber (among others) supporting it.

Marco is supporting it but has blatantly said he doesn't think it's going to work out.

Dan Benjamin has echoed Marco's statements and implied that he specifically bought in to reserve a specific user name, which I imagine is just a precaution to protect his business name on a potential new service.

And Grueber... I don't know. I haven't listened to him in a long time.

Anyways, I wouldn't call that overwhelming support. I think it's a lot of tail chasing from a few people.

Notice that I didn't say I was supporting app.net because this group of people are supporting it. I'm supporting it because these are people who I find interesting will likely be there for a while. I don't really care _why_ they are there, just that they are there. Add Horace Dediu, Jim Dalrymple, MG Siegler, KenJennings - and I can now transition over. Of all those names, only KenJennings is unlikely to care - but, I have to believe, that for a while, crossposting to twitter/app.net, and a client that can sort out the two, and keep a unified feed, will resolve that issue.

Just a heads up - it's Marco Arment (no i on the end) and John Gruber (no umlaut, so no transliteration of ü to ue).

The Armenti is a bit of a joke, I think.

Jokes on me. I was actually listening to the Kinda Critical (i think) podcast last night when they commented on how some people refer to Marco's last name as "Armenti" - one guess as to what impact this (subliminally) had on me.

   Why not to use Quora?
   Top users and no ads!
   ;)

Closed to anyone who doesn't want to identify themselves.

I think the real bubble is people ignoring the existence of status.net and identi.ca, and the reasons why they never took off as alternatives to twitter.

Status.net has evolved into a private twitter for companies but the identica service still runs, still has a user base, and is everything you need for an alternative to twitter.

Random Canadian company vs. a well-connected Silicon Valley founder would potentially be sufficient.

Or 2012 vs. 2009.

Random Canadian company vs. a well-connected Silicon Valley founder would potentially be sufficient.

You mean as a reason to choose the former, right?

For me, I don't care if it's a bubble. I'm not going to stop using Twitter any time soon, I don't think - but I'd love to have another network that's full of the people who will self-select to join this. Ultimately I think they'll end up driving usage for a lot of other people, too, and I'll bet that's his strategy, at least in part.

You're missing the point. He doesn't have to create a closed platform for paying members only. He just need to have enough paying members to maintain the platform.

Wikipedia is free and has no ads, but survives thanks to its "paid members" (i.e., donors). Still open and free of ads for everybody (well, except for that one month that you see Jimmy Wales' banners all the time :)).

Yes, somebody has to pay the bills on app.net. Maybe it'll be 10,000 core hackernews users. If it gets traction, maybe he'll find enough corporate supporters and donors to keep it afloat. Maybe he'll be able to create an ecosystem where devs pay to get premium services, or some revenue sharing model (like Apple/Android).

There's tons of options to make money without having to sell its user base like twitter/fb. That's the approach he's taking.

It's not an easy challenge, but kudos to Dalton for trying. I'm a backer, and a strong supporter of the initiative. Not because I'm against ads (quite the opposite; I work at a marketing agency), but there's a clear conflict of interest between companies whose product is to sell their user base - fb, twitter - versus those that focus on users - wikipedia, dropbox, etc.

I agree it's a tough sell, but it does looks like he will reach the funding target on Kickstarter.

What's the real-world problem App.net solves? I'm not being cynical, just curious. If I back the project, I want to know the pain point I'm solving and if it's a pain point that actually is worth solving versus something else. The other question I have is, who's the market? People are using the HN vs. Reddit comparison, but HN is about as niche as it gets and also doesn't really do much other than provide a place for us to share some data. Muggles don't usually visit HN and I'm wondering if they'd have a need for App.net.

I'm considering backing it, but like all investments, there's some due diligence involved. There's also the opportunity cost for the money that should be considered. I'm also wondering why kickstarter is appropriate as opposed to traditional VC and seed funds. If there's a sustainable business there, it would seem like the App.net team would have a very easy time raising money -- they seem competent, capable and passionate (at least enough to warrant a small seed round.)

I don't think it solves one, I think its providing a way for developers to stick it to the man. In this case, Twitter, Craigslist, and Facebook.

If by "sticking it to the man" you mean "creating a business model based on an open api and not the content in the platform the API uses," then I agree.

The problem with Twitter and Facebook is that they've moved away from supporting external developers into media companies (so the argument goes).

If that's true, then Twitter and Facebook are looking for the best interests of it's advertising partners like every media company (radio, television, print, etc.) rather than the consumers.

In the case of Facebook and Twitter, it means rolling out features that benefit the advertisers. Now, it is certainly possible that the features rolled out could benefit both sides, but the moment Twitter/Facebook has to make a decision between the two they'll pick the advertisers since that's how they butter their bread.

App.net, by contrast, only has one option which is make the best choices for the developers/users. In some sense, this is really more of a B-to-B venture than a B-to-C since, ideally, App.net focuses on the API and let's the developers build the robust applications.

Frankly, I like this idea.

If you took Facebook and Twitter making a few people mad lately out of the equation, this is a mediocre idea at best. I think its feeding off of people's temporary anger at the situation. I think it will pass.

The economics behind the app.net idea are way beyond mediocre. Charging users for a platform capable of hosting a wide range of apps and compensating developers with revenue share based on usage aligns everyone's interests with the users. The platform provides the best infrastructure and the app developers are incentivised to create lasting value for users, since they keep getting paid for as long as people keep using their apps.

Besides, if it's such a mediocre idea why are some of the smartest folks in tech backing it already? Check out the gallery of community members on the signup page.

Some of the smartest people in tech have supported a ton of failures. Every VC on the planet has a long list of "the next big thing" that never went anywhere. I don't necessarily care if some of the "smartest" people in tech are backing it. App.net has raised under $300,000 -- if it was THAT awesome, they would have raised the full $500K almost instantly. Fred Wilson would have just just wrote a check for the whole thing. They might like the idea, but if there was a viable business model there would have been a frenzy if the proposed product was that awesome. I still can't understand how this is supposed to make money. And giving someone a $50 or $100 or $1000 pledge on Kickstarter is pocket change for tech luminaries. They're likely supporting the founders more than a specific implementation. I don't know many people actually salivating over this or else they wouldn't be needing Kickstarter.

More power to the founders, I'm just skeptical because it still isn't clear what this project is supposed to accomplish. It's almost like Occupy got involved in a software project to vent anger over the big companies acting in ways with which they disagree.

Still, good luck to the App.net team. I hope they succeed and I'm proven to be an ignorant Luddite!

Sure there's an anger component, but that's a low blow to call it Occupy. First of all, it's not an aimless protest at a "big company", it's anger about the fact that Twitter became a big company on the backs of these developers, but when it comes to monetize, turning into an ad company and shutting any threat to the ad revenue stream down is always the safe bet.

More importantly, it's not just a bunch of ideologues camped out on a lawn smoking weed. Dalton is making an assertion that the only way to make the service that the Twitter developers of 2006, 2007, 2008 signed up for, is to enshrine it in founding principles. This is because inevitably advertisers always outbid users.

Because of this, of course VCs aren't going to pony up the $500k. There's not that much upside for a VC. But that doesn't mean the service doesn't have value, it just means that value can't be captured the same way a billion-user free service can. However, the promise of stability means that for developers it is much less risky to build against, and they can create much more value. Some of that value maybe captured, some of it not, but just because no one is making a buck doesn't mean there isn't a tremendous amount of value being created.

Finally, the Kickstarter thing is critical to this project because it validates the idea itself. If a VC writes a check that proves nothing, but if 10,000 users promise $50 that is a critical mass right there. It's sort of like how public radio members drive the big contributions. No one is going to pay $50 for an empty social network, but if there are 10,000 quality people there you know there will be at least something interesting on day one.

>> it's anger about the fact that Twitter became a big company on the backs of these developers,

No, I disagree on this. This is not true. Remember, the developers wouldn't even care about developing for this platform if it wasn't big in the first place. Developers didn't make it big. Twitter became big, and developers came flocking in.

It would be mediocre if it was simply an "open api" twitter/facebook but, given the chatter on the Alpha site and the look of the API on git (https://github.com/appdotnet/api-spec), I think there is something bigger going on here.

Its a cool api, and I mean no disrespect to anybody involved like the guy said above, I just believe the business as a whole is a kneejerk reaction to a couple of well connected people and sites getting the rug pulled out from under them. It would be cool if they could get enough people to use it, but the API is only useful if there is useful data to pull from it.

It's not exactly a knee-jerk reaction to an isolated incident though. Twitter has been moving in the media company direction for a while now, and with the latest communications you can almost see the "fuck you developers" oozing out from between every line of shmarmy corporate-speak.

Any developer would be a fool now to build a product whose core relies on Twitter's API. And yet the core functionality of Twitter is an incredibly useful base to build on.

With App.net you don't have the volume of Twitter, but on the other hand you will presumably have a much higher signal to noise ratio. It won't be inundated with marketing spam, bot follows, and banal teen banter. And in any case, Twitter was small once too, and people found a use for it. I think a critical mass of 10,000 is definitely enough to enable some interesting apps.

So what's the business model? Are there enough developers willing to pay real money for access to an API? It seems hard enough to get developers to actually buy a license for Sublime or TextMate (or even pay $0.99 for a song on iTunes.)

I could see some potential in the enterprise space to license out the API for companies to then build their own information services atop of.. but that seems to get away from the "power to the people" idea this project seems to be capitalizing on.

>App.net focuses on the API and let's the developers build the robust applications.

Robust applications that do what? I'm not sure what the value of the API is, isn't the point of a Twitter-like API to allow people to use Twitter data. The API side of the equation isn't that hard to do.. it's the content accessed with the API that would be useful. I can see and appreciate the tech in this project, but I'm not sure why a developer would build an application to consume an API without much data..

I'm confused. I don't mean any disrespect to the folks involved or their supporters, but I'm not sure what this project will accomplish -- is it a technology platform or a content platform? And is the technology that "hard" -- it seems to me that getting the content would be the hard part.

Exactly. People would consider a mobile apps outside 99 cents mark as expensive, even more so if it costs you $50

Some / many people would not consider an app that cost more than 99cents expensive, and having a barrier to exclude those that do isn't necessarily a bad thing.

I don't understand the confusion folks have about the business model (earnest confusion, not "yur dumb" trolling confusion). App.net creates an API and people pay money to have access. Different tiers demand different prices. $500,000 in membership fees makes it sustainable (says Dalton). The big question and, quite frankly, the whole point of Dalton's experiment (as I read him anyway, I don't know the fellow personally), is to test if there is actually a market for it, hence the kickstarter like campaign. There are paid version of all sorts of web services that are offered for free that are sustainable. I pay for a server space and a domain names yearly. I don't know why something like this couldn't also exist for those who wanted more control. Will Dalton's work? Time will tell, but something like this will happen and will happen soon.

EDIT: Incidentally, you do know that other people are trying similar things, right? Heello, for instance, is rebooting with a slightly different model: http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/08/08/twitpic-founders-he....

Just to be clear, app.net is a centralized messaging service, to be owned and operated as a private company, allowing integration to whoever it sees fit, at whatever cost it sees fit?

The upside is they promise not to show ads?

No, the upside is that as app.net relies on people paying money, the users are customers instead of being the product.

What's the product then?

I think it's the service that is the product.

Have you taken a moment to read anything about it? It is abundantly clear.

join.app.net, in case you really haven't, which I'm hoping is the case.

That's no answer. As far as I can tell, the product is people willing to pay for their message updates and then a rev-share between the apps that allow them to do it, and Dalton's service.

If that's your idea of a product... good luck.

Could someone who has an answer to these concerns post a link for the rest of us? For instance, what restricts app.net from limiting access to the API in the future, or from upping the price severely once it's gained more traction?

If app.net turned evil people would stop paying and then app.net would go broke. That's the theory, anyway.

Seems like a pretty crappy theory actually. Why are thoes things not built in an unchangeable charter (or something like it).

Also FB is making $1 per year per user atm (storing photos,messages and heaps of other stuff). Why does dalton need $50 per year to store 140 character message?

Edit: Turns out there is a charter called "core values"

My guess is that he's asking for $50 because he doesn't want to attract people who won't extract significantly more than $50 worth of value.

Regarding your comparison to FB: price is certainly not just about cost; it can also be about establishing the right signals to potential customers and non-customers. In this case, I suspect the signal is "if $50 doesn't seem like a great deal for this product, you're not the target customer".

Aside from attracting a particular kind of customer just by setting a price at all (e.g., eliminating huge swaths of automated spammers), this can potentially create a positive network effect. If you're someone who wants to follow a social news feed, which society sounds better: the one where everyone involved cared enough to put up $50, or the society where botnets can easily create thousands of accounts per day?

There's a lot to be said about free-for-all ecosystems; but they're not the only solution.

I read HN every day. It is probably the site I read the most after Google reader. It is my go to for filling time between doing actual work and doing more actual work. I'd like to think I'm vaguely down with the Internet kids, but..

Wtf is App.net and why do I care? Am I supposed to know about this already? Is this supposed to be as common knowledge as twitter or facebook in my nomenclature?

Dalton is sure as shit not going to tell you, and the site is far too awesome to waste its time telling you either.

Reading the API docs (really, I have to read API docs to work out what this does?!) tells me it's a "real-time social service where users and developers come first, not advertisers.".

Taking that knowledge on hand and looking at alpha.app.net, it looks like a twitter clone, but presumably one that you pay for.

Aren't there free twitter clones already?

Anyway, rant over, colour me confused. Idk... there are lots of projects people could be building, and there is every kind of possibility this has really useful stuff in it, but from the outside it just looks like another twitter clone.

What? It says "App.net is a real-time social feed without the ads." right at the top of https://join.app.net, and "Continue to join.app.net, our Kickstarter-like project to create a real-time social feed." right on app.net.

How is he supposed to tell you what it is if you don't even go to the website?

I clicked the link in his blog post, which took me here: https://alpha.app.net/. You're right though, 3 paragraphs into the blog there is a link to join.app.net.

Incidentally, whatever additional stuff dalton is planning to add and let developers add, the alpha currently appears to be enough of a Twitter clone that it should be compatible with Twitter clients. Therefore, I'm much more likely to pay for this (before or after the funding deadline) if someone convinces Tapbots to add support to Tweetbot... or, equivalently, releases a Twitter API to app.net proxy and a hack to redirect it to there.

I would have worded a message like this much differently - I would keep it positive. I would not mention my app name and the word vaporware in the same article, I would just include the bit where I demonstrate who is using app.net, and link the code. I would also not give lip service to doubters who say the funding goal won't be reached.

This message may feel nuanced to the author, but it's tone is negative and defensive.

I think it works for this sort of audience. We're skeptics. I was skeptical that their Kickstarter would be successful. This has convinced me otherwise.

I'm still not convinced that the project itself will be successful, but time will tell.

I just signed up. Actually a rather slick sign up process. Well done. Emails look nice.

Only weird thing was the confirmation of my Twitter account. To start with I selected the tweet option and the sign up process seemed to end with me being redirected to my Twitter account page, but somehow I didn't feel "finished".

So then I went back and authorised the app with Twitter as well and that seemed to properly complete the process. Maybe I just needed to wait a bit for the original tweet to be picked up, but that wasn't obvious.

StatusNet is also not vaporware. Furthermore, it's also open source and federated rather than being yet another proprietary walled garden run by a corporation.

The thing with projects/apps/sites is that there's a threshold of time before it's considered passe. It's not logical and we in turn waste a lot of time and resources reinventing the wheel but that's the truth of the matter.

I can't shake the feeling that this initiative suffers from the worst of both worlds. It's not entirely open AND it's a paid service.

Maybe you're right, but you could just as easily frame it as the best of both worlds:

It's driven by the user's interests and it has the polish of a commercial product.

That's the goal...I'm skeptical but hope they can prove me wrong.

I think a paid model will be the only way forward for the set of people that value privacy and control over their data.

I dont know that app.net hits the right ($) spot for that user group. The implication of facebook's revenue is that users are willing to trade privacy and data ownership for about $4/yr (the current monetization rate of a facebook user), which means getting to $50/yr seems somewhat arbitrary and hard to decode.

I think at some point in the future people will see $50/yr for those two things (privacy and data control) as a relative bargain. I do today, and backed this proposal due to these concerns.

I think driving developer investments may be critical to getting to their funding goal, and frankly they are offering to take away a potential threat and not making a strong enough case about what value they are adding. It often requires an explicit threat to get people to pony up for security, not an implied threat.

>> I think at some point in the future people will see $50/yr for those two things (privacy and data control) as a relative bargain.

I can't remember ever hearing anyone mention privacy/data control issues outside of HN. Facebook has ridden slipshod over these issues many times and yet I've never heard anyone bring them up in conversation. The echo chamber here is booming with concern but who actually cares? Users care about the communication advantages of their online accounts but how many value the identity associated with them? People change their phone number because they want a new model that isn't available on their network. Do they see their online identities as any less interchangeable? If this is the case what kind of explicit threat could possibly justify paying money for protection of such an identity?

I am not in Silicon Valley nor connected to any technology companies.

I know of a number of people within my own circle that refuse to use Facebook or Twitter due to privacy concerns. I have heard a growing number of stories from people concerned about protecting themselves and their friends, families from the potential down sides to an over-shared life and deleting or abandoning accounts due to those concerns. These are not people inside of the echo chamber on Hacker News or the technology field or Silicon Valley, these are people in retail, in investments, in hospitality, education.. from all walks of life.

Facebook (as an example) wants to become an identity service. They are selling themselves on their ability to authenticate identity. It is impossible to delete a facebook account, and attempting to do so will merely ensure that you are the only one without access to the collected data.

I reiterate the point that "in the future" people will see $50/yr as a bargain for privacy and data control. My first thought when seeing App.net was "awesome idea.. 18-24 months too soon, especially at that price point."

It seems that development is going full steam ahead even though the project hasn't reached it's funding goal yet. What happens if the goal isn't met by the deadline? I can't imagine Dalton will just drop it. I guess what I'm asking is, what's the significance of the funding goal being met or not?

Am I missing something?

If they don't meet the goal, they don't get any money from people who have already pledged. So it's very significant.

Is the funding goal about the financial significance? I'd argue it's more about the significance of proving there are 10,000 paid members as the foundation for the community (a notion of PG's that Dalton has referenced).

I'm a backer, and I'd argue the brilliance of this is two-fold: Dalton gets to spend a month to see if there is enough demand to build this out for an initial community (instead of 8 months finding out the hard way), and us as backers will only be charged if there is a critical mass of interesting folks to launch the community.

Neither of these are about the financial significance of $500,000 or $200,000 for that matter.

I think it doesn't have to just be a Twitter rival. Twitter is heading into the mainstream direction. Focusing on news, celebrities, etc. A voice will develop if this does go to plan and Twitter could be Reddit while App.net could be Hacker News.

It's definitely not vaporware. I have backed the project, and I'm impressed so far.

I don't understand why a big company (or even a medium sized company) with no stake in the newsfeeds of Twitter or Facebook, or at least no interest in those being monopoly, doesn't fund this 100% just to reduce the power of Twitter and Facebook. $500k is not a huge amount of money if Twitter is disrupting your business (SMS carriers? Conventional blogging service? Print publication? Portal? Yahoo?)

After August 13, how much can the business model of App.net change?

Is it possible that a free-tier could be added that allows the average user to access and use the service without paying? Additional developer & other features would be available to those who pay for them.

In determining a business model for App.net, it seems they've never addressed why there isn't a free tier.

There is a free tier. Anyone can read the global feed.

I won't say it'll fail only because he's so persistent in gaining mind share. Sooner or later, someone will "acquire" this project.

Who has accused it of being vaporware?

perhaps a few strawmen did?

I could be pedantic and link to a few tweets, but I think a quick search.twitter.com would yield you a few answers.

I wouldn't say it has been accused of being vaporware, but I think the reason some people aren't backing it is because they believe it may just be an API and nothing more (when in fact there's a working proof-of-concept alpha version).

Also, to those that've backed the project and want access to the alpha: email join@app.net and you'll be able to get in. :-)

I don't think it is a widely held opinion. Hopefully this move helps you find the rest of your backers. :D

Backed.

Facebook most likely.

There were certainly people calling app.net and our API spec vaporware on HN and other places.

The purpose of this post is to showcase the alpha-version of our web service and API to users and developers and to encourage them to check it out. We hope that our work so far will speak for itself and get people excited about join.app.net.

>Additionally, if you take a look at Kickstarter’s official stats, it would appear that of 35,138 unsuccessful projects, only 2,026 of them ever reached 41% or more of their funding goal. In other words, only 5.7% of Kickstarter projects that don’t succeed ever manage to reach 40% of goal.

Oh no. This is not how we Bayes. I don't have the mental energy to translate these natural language statements into statements of probability and actually apply Bayes' theorem, but I'm pretty sure if I did, the result would be a lot less inspiring of confidence than "only a 5.7% chance of failure!"

Can anyone yet point to something done with app.net that twitter won't or can't do? $50 is a lot to pay for something that so far acts just like twitter. Without those new and interesting apps, which right now do appear to be vaporware, it's not worth a premium over twitter. I don't think clients that just show you the feed or your feed count, because twitter can do that.

What app.net can do is offer you as a developer the credible promise that whatever you build on it will not be shut down because it conflicts with business decisions made 1, 5 or 10 years from now.

This of course trickles down to the user, since you are virtually guaranteed that there will be new clients for as long as the service exists. With Twitter you are virtually guaranteed that no new client ideas will see the light of day unless they come from Twitter themselves, and those will all be designed to increase your usage of the service with any increased utility merely serving as the hook.

I do understand this, and would like it to be true. But until at least one application actually exists that twitter won't or can't do, this is all promises, and those apps (which I hope aren't limited to user clients) are, in fact, vaporware. To a user, this $50 isn't today buying them anything they can't get from twitter, which is why app.net might not get funded.

Well this has only been promoted for like 3 weeks, so give it a minute. There's a chicken or egg problem, if no one buys into the dream before it's reality then it will fail.

It doesn't take half a million dollars to come up with one single actual demoable application that does something twitter won't or can't do. The point of this thing is supposed to be better apps. Fine, show me one, and I'll pay $50 to see more.

Do people really care about this? That might be the core problem.

That said, I really respect Dalton for going all out on it.

Now I got it. This is a twitter clone.

Give me 3 reasons to use app.net instead of Twitter?

How do you different from Status.net & Yammer?

The only reason I didn't sign up was that I felt that I'm paying for the cause and not the product. Not that I support the reason behind app.net but it just makes me hesitate. If it's simple as "pay for this great product", I might have. Good luck on meeting your funding goal!!

You are paying for the product though... You're paying for an account and alpha access to the product.

Dalton stated he will return all the money if he does not raise the full amount.

Now why do I have the feeling that there is going to be a annex to that statement in a few days? He'll probably figure something out that allows him to (be allowed to) keep the money raised.

Your baseless pessimism is annoying at best.

He is by no means a private figure -- a move like that would certainly destroy his reputation.

re: Kickstarter stats, when 59% is remaining and that remaining percentage is over $250,000 I don't think there are any Kickstarter projects that have ever come back from that position. Very few have ever had $500k targets...

@dalton you need to pimp up the alpha design. That counts too, if you want a larger audience.

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