The money part of App.net is a red herring
alexhillman.com
alexhillman.com
Writing a blogpost speculating about the motivations behind App.net, behind people backing it, the result, the lesson about the post speaking of the fear of money, about how app.net will turnout.
Just a bunch of negative speculation bundled together and called a blogpost then to go on to the comments and boast about how charitable you are [1]
At worst, APP.NET is an experiment and people found it worthy to spend $50 on this experiment. NO-ONE knows how this thing can/will turn out.
I am really looking forward to what the outcome of this project/experiment would be. i.e a real-time messaging API with no fear of the rug being pulled under you by the platform owner.
If I may attempt to restate, the argument is as follows: Ilya wrote an article criticizing those who are reluctant to ask users to plunk down cold hard cash for an actual solution to their problem. This is a legitimate point. However, app.net is a poor example of someone attempting to actually get paying customers because the app.net customers are doing something more similar to donating to a cause they believe in than actually buying a product. The value of this product -- the good feeling of supporting something new and exciting -- will inherently disappear as soon as the product is no longer new and exciting. Additionally, because the product does not yet exist in anything resembling a final form, the customers are able to project their own hopes and dreams for what they would like it to be, rather than what it actually is.
This argument is a lot more than saying nothing. I definitely agree with it. If a reluctance to ask for money in fear of getting shot down because your product isn't any good is the problem, then asking for money to support some product that exists more as dreams than code isn't the solution. The solution is to build something that real people will buy, not because they are your friends, not because they want to be able to say they were an early adopter of something that will become big, but because the product actually provides value to them as it exists today.
As to App.net being more of a cause than a product, I disagree. App.net's form is formless. That users are projecting their hopes on the API is the idea. The difference is the users (mainly devs) are being empowered to build out those hopes.
The Twitter interface is just a use case of a realtime API. People waiting for Dalton to build the killer use case have missed the point. Look to the chaps that are paying $100/ year.
I don't know much about app.net and will happily admit to being wrong about this, but my impression was that they were offering a platform without any of the ingredients for duplicating that platform. In that respect, like Twitter, even if they promise not to cater to the advertising/user data industry.
I guess every company would like to become as indispensable to the internet as TCP/IP. Except that this isn't how it works - it has to be open and easily reproduced in order to become a thing like TCP/IP, which hurts monetization.
A lot of people feel very deeply about some of the ideas around app.net and with people's speculation/discussion you can get a sense of what is really important to people who use HN.
Edit: this isn't meant to accuse Dalton of nefarious plans in the least. I just don't understand the causal link.
Or, to be a bit more concrete: People are supporting App.net because they hope it's possible, as a business proposition, to successfully fork a subnetwork away from a major social network. Once we have confidence that this is possible, it feels like we can always do it again. We can fork it as many times as we need to. When the rug gets pulled out from under some of us, as it inevitably will, we'll weave another rug.
The money thing, which you believe is irrelevant, is actually part of the argument here: The more revenue each node in the network is worth, the smaller the size of the sub-network that can profitably be broken off and operated independently.
(Note that there's as yet no evidence that Twitter itself, let alone a subset of Twitter, can be run at a profit.)
By this interpretation, if App.net succeeds at all, Dalton's personal notions of how to run a network will rapidly diminish in relevance. Because, once one App.net succeeds, more will rapidly follow.
It's VERY relevant. Just not in the way that the other author I'd cited made it out to be, nor does money have the protective alignment that I think people have convinced themselves it brings.
That said, your fragmentation thesis is an interesting one for sure. Have you seen anything along those lines researched outside of this context, by chance?
The developers still make up a minority of the user revenue. Even if that flipped...there are multiple customer interests at play. Developers, member users, and the company.
No advertisers is better than advertisers, but I don't see anything that protects developers (except Dalton's word, which you didn't bring up) from similar fates in this model.
Is kinda the point I've been trying to make. :)
A big part of twitter's initial growth was due to 3rd party development. But the tides shifted there as well, not (just) because of advertisers but because of "normal people" joining as users.
I wonder if that's who we're actually excited to keep out? Not the advertisers, but all of those totally mediocre people who make our trending topics embarrassingly dull ;)
OK fair enough. But I could have sworn I was just replying directly to something you said in your above comment. And I don't think I took it too far out of context. :)
> A big part of twitter's initial growth was due to 3rd party development. But the tides shifted there as well, not (just) because of advertisers but because of "normal people" joining as users.
Agreed. But what would you think the split would be on tide shifting regarding 3rd party development due to advertisers vs. 'normal people' signing up? I'd still bet on the former being the more pressing issue.
> I wonder if that's who we're actually excited to keep out? Not the advertisers, but all of those totally mediocre people who make our trending topics embarrassingly dull ;)
For me personally, I'm more excited about losing the advertisers. But now that you mention it, maybe losing (at least for a while) the mediocre users you speak of is just an added bonus. :P
Of course, not I or anyone else knows how App.net is going to turn out at this point, but I'm approaching it with curiosity at this stage, I don't yet see a reson to add morbidity.
In Twitter's case, the 3rd-party developers add value for the users, but subtract value from advertisers. This is good for users, but since the advertisers are Twitter's customers, this is bad for Twitter's business.
2. The clear business model of charging users makes that goal viable and feasible.
So far, I have no reason to doubt him. Do you?
BTW, I have no idea if it will be wildly successful. However, I'm certain interesting things will come out of it.
I don't have a specific reason for doubt, but I don't have evidence for confidence either.
I'm 100% behind a paid API as a service for the purpose of financial sustainability. But I don't think that's what has actually been purchased by the first batch of customers.
They paid for a dream, like you. And that's okay.
My point was to make sure people had a chance to see that's what they purchased. :)
1) Dalton's founding vision is strongly principalled. This is what will give the company the strength to battle against the temptation to stripmine the value of the company the way that Twitter is doing with their developer-hostile stance.
2) The fact that 10k+ people put down a significant payment up front mean that there is a buy-in and critical mass to the service that mean it will have some value from day one, even just to users, and even if it is impossible for it to completely replace Twitter.
3) The money in the bank means there is both means and pressure for App.net to be developed quickly.
None of that is a guarantee, but I think it's a strong foundation for success.
You have no evidence to either doubt or believe. Like you have said, you chose the former, some people have decided to choose the later. That was a cool scenario until you decided your position is the right way.
What I expect from a developer like you is to attempt building/prototyping what you would like to see on top app.net. Non devs like me can speculate on what products might/come from this and things we would like to see.
To be clear, it is very good to raise questions, but let them be of substance . There is a great way to go about it [1]
This is Hackernews, we do not spend all our energy and focus on the several ways things might fail. We have more than enough people wired for that.
BTW, I am not a financial backer yet. Hopefully, I will be soon enough.
[1] https://social-igniter.com/blog/2012/08/why-we-support-app-d...
It says that marketing the concept of 'paid' web-apps in a professional way managed to attract > 500'000 USD in sales (as opposed to providing a solution for real user problems).
That's a fact, not speculation. Building something that people pay money for is hard. Failing to do that and asking people to buy the dream while at the same time doing heavy marketing criticizing the concept seems ironic, to say the least.
I don't know what I want, but I'll know it when I see it.
A customer who wants to pay you to mess around with new ideas and come up with something great. Nothing more boring than client that knows exactly what they want.
My experience is that the only want to pay for the "coming up with something great" part, not the messing around with new ideas.
Worse still, they only want to pay for what they see, which is usually just the tip of the iceberg.
Give me a boring client over someone with lots of imagination, any day.
Yep.
Customer wants A, B and C. You point out that A and B collide, and offer a solution, D. Customer insists on A, B and C. You tell him again. Customer insists on A, B and C. You create A, B and C. Customer realizes that A and B collide and that A, B and C are really not working as imagined. Customer blames you. You present D again. Customer caves in and orders D, as a replacement for A and B. Customer blames the additional cost on you and is unhappy.
Customer wants H, I and J. You tell him that he wants M, N and O. But that M, N and O cost twice as much as H, I and J. Customer is furious. You want the business. So you build H, I and J. Customer realizes it's not working. Customer blames you and is unhappy.
Customer wants X. You ask him why. Because of Q. You realize that the customer would need E instead of X. You offer X but you build E instead, because it's possible within the same budget and time window. You relabel E to X. Customer is happy. His vision worked.
How do you correlate that with the mostly-functional alpha which already has 90% of what I use twitter for?
I wasn't expecting anything functional for 5-6 months, and, as it exists, it's already mostly there.
I don't mean technically. I'm sure Dalton is quite qualified to build anything he commits to. I mean he doesn't know how to build it because he doesn't know what he's building. (Yet.)
Except the rules didn't really change.
To argue otherwise is like saying that it made no sense for my parents to have a second child, because they already had one. Aren't two kids, with similar genetics and similar environment, simply redundant?
Obviously not. You can't duplicate the original even if you try. Nor is that the point. The point is to diversify.
I think Twitter is working fine at the moment – whatever ugly shoe they're allegedly about to drop, it hasn't dropped on me yet. But it's still great to try and reinvent Twitter, just as it was great to try and reinvent Perl, even though Perl still works just fine. You end up somewhere different.
This is bigger than Dalton, it's about what we want the services we use to look like.
Hence, the money being an intentional distraction (red herring) from the real issues.
I did not commit to app.net, but I am philosophically backing them. I think the meta-goal is right, even if this particular incantation is (or isn't) the right one.
There's a group that thinks App.net is not the point, they think App.net is somehow the social network backbone or "social-network-as-a-service" or something. But that doesn't make a lot of sense to me because App.net is charging. So if you start you're little niche social network "MechanicWorld," which seems like back-to-the-future but ok, are the users paying MechanicWorld or App.net (how would they know App.net exists?). Is MechanicWorld going to offer free signup, provide an advertising based business model, and simply subsidize the free user accounts? If that's the case, what's the point of App.net again?
Some people think it is a twitter but for people that visit HN/TechCrunch ... don't those people use Twitter? That's a pretty strange market, but this one is a bit of a strawman, I've only heard it a bit and I don't think Dalton has intention of this.
I think it is still very vague what it is and how it will work. I think most concrete, least nebulous, it could be is "Twitter that You Pay For - Period." It has been covered to death, but I don't think you can rival Twitter with that.
Do you really see CNN blasting it all over the place, restaurants putting "Follow us on App.net, ($50/yr)," etc? That's the weight, unfortunately Twitter has. Twitter has people believing they are responsible for the Arab Spring (yeah right) -- I don't know how App.net is going to get this kind of press.
And the other thing, App.net, really? That's the name? When I first heard about it, I thought "Oh, ok they seem to have some completely unrelated business already and are just using this 'App.net' thing temporarily" but I don't see anything implying that is going to change; I'm going to assume someone is working on this, because that's no name for what they're trying to do (whatever it is exactly).
Nevertheless, it is nice to see something besides "We are revolutionizing the way users share photos or communicate" "... but we don't know how we're going to make money -- advertising?"
That's a pretty callous way to end a post, Alex. It's not either-or. If you really feel that way, ask for a refund. Donate the money to charity whether you get the refund or not.
It reminds me of the people you see who write forums posts like 'I just got my first Mac, now what?' when the answer is always 'do whatever you wanted it for in the first place'
Per the OP:
"By the way, I put my $50 in out of pure morbid curiosity of what’s under the hood."
I think you can both think something probably isn't going to work or have issues with it and support it as a hedge or out of, as he said, "morbid curiosity". People do this with politics quite frequently.
Really? Do you have an example?
"I didn't really think the war in Iraq would go very well, and I don't really support it; I just wanted to see what would happen."
http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2011/06/dueling-donations-lo...
You can find examples here of the same individual supporting people in both parties:
Most people, especially on HN, pointed to the way "Dalton handled things" as the reason for wanting App.net to succeed. What drives the majority of the activity on App.net are these continuing discussions of what App.net could be, how fantastic it could be and what are the various kinds of pains it would solve. In fact, these very same conversations are as generic and ambiguous as the way that I describe them. Very few specific points are brought up, but rather, there are these sweeping discussions taking place on the platform.
I'm kind of curious whether what Dalton is trying to do with app.net is only capable of being accomplished with Twitter and with Twitter only. This is considering Twitter's userbase, Twitter's 3rd party app ecosystem, Twitter's traction and Twitter's history.
My point in saying this is that, it's impossible to recreate all this with another service (app.net). They are starting from scratch not only in function, but in context. I'd argue this is what's leading to the ambiguous dynamic and cloudy future for the service.
But what got me excited was his basic insight -- not entirely novel, I'll grant -- that any giant social media company selling ads is going to be beholden to advertisers, and that a social media company that is beholden to their users might be a different thing.
Lots of things are possible here. The product might suck. They might get totally overwhelmed. They might not be able to sell it. Their API might end up being worse than the others (though it doesn't look that way to me).
But people kick in to kickstarter-style things because there's some idea they want to get behind (e.g. "sword fighting games should be better"), even if it doesn't pan out. And to be honest, even the OP -- in the throes of his cynicism -- is obviously experiencing the same sensation.
Free but ad supported isn't the only way online, but one could be forgiven for thinking it is. I am happy to encourage anyone trying alternatives. I want to see what social services that don't need to cater to advertisers look like, and this is one such model. I wonder why some people appear quite threatened by such.
Time will tell if the service turns out to be a bat or not. I approach with few preconceptions, I'm happy to wait it out for a while and give the guy the benefit of the doubt. Seems to me he's doing OK so far.
I could imagine companies wanting silo'd instances for company use (if app.net started offering it at some point). Status.Net offers something like this I believe too.
App.net is an API-centric twitter. The fact that it costs money or doesn't have advertising is secondary. Sure, it's probably a requirement for an API-centric twitter, but the API-centricity is the real actual key.
ps - Dalton, understand why reserved twitter names is for contributors only, but you might want a feature like _twittername as a sub-namespace for twitter reserved names that are aliases for real app.net names. Just sayin.
Apple iOS Registered Developer - $99/yr - TAM: 365M iOS devices
Google Play for Developers - $25 one-time fee - TAM: 400M Android devices
App.net developer tier - $100/yr - TAM: 10K+ members
i saw two people facing away from each other, their index fingers raised as if to say "nope, we're not part of a rorsach blot"
Being free of ads is nice. But it seems to me that the hype for this parallels the hype for Twitter, which was mostly viciously circular: you have to be on Twitter because otherwise you'll miss what's happening on Twitter.
Now I am paying $50 to help him build it. I guess that makes sense if you have business ideas for pitching to the people who feel they have to be on Twitter. But I will admit to a little discomfort with how much of the interest is based on projections of everyone else's interest.