App.net Gets First Dedicated iOS App, Passes 17,500 Users | Hacker News Reader

App.net Gets First Dedicated iOS App, Passes 17,500 Users

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31 pointsolalonde30 comments

A lot of people who didn't follow App.net/Alpha on the first go around, are going to look at this and say, "Why on earth would I pay $50 for a twitter clone that has 1/10,000th as many users, and that absolutely none of my friends or celebrities are on?"

Think of App.net/Alpha as an experiment, funded by geeks who want to see if a service can be built in which the users are the customers instead of the advertisers. The $50, I have to believe, is "Startup Capital" to get Dalton running with a bit of infrastructure, cover his salary for a year, and maybe let him hire a couple designers, and developers.

This service, more than likely, is not meant for you right now, as it's just gotten started. Clients are under development, features are being added.

Check back in six months before passing any judgement on it's merit.

Exactly. Imagine what Twitter could be with third-party developer support, and then ask yourself if that would be worth about $5 a month. Or just wait for half a year as stated.

The problem is most people are not devs and don't care about twitter tightening up their API rules (which is entirely up to them), I understand and applaude the idea as a developer but I can't see it rivalling twitter.

They do care about their apps being broken.

But there's no way app.net is going to be Twitter without ads if you have to pay $50/year for it. It may be Super Small Niche Twitter, but it won't come close to being actual Twitter in numbers.

"Startup Capital" is certainly how it's been marketed, but it's not true as far as I can see.

Mixed Media Labs, the company that owns app.net, has taken $5 million of venture capital funding from Andreessen Horowitz [1].

1 - http://mxml.tumblr.com/post/1539239012/off-to-the-races

> want to see if a service can be built in which the users are the customers instead of the advertisers.

That's not accurate. The $50 is for a full year of App.net service. That's all. Where is the binding agreement that that says what you are suggesting?

People like to quip that if you aren't paying for something, you are what's being sold. Frankly, the same is true even if you are paying for something. We should have learned by not that unless it's spelled out, we should be wary. After all, if App.net gets bought out, you've effectively paid to become the product.

So, what rights is App.net giving you for paying $50? What promises have they made that can be enforced?

Take this:

> We will never sell your personal data, content, feed, interests, clicks, or anything else to advertisers. We promise.

Maybe I'm just cynical, but that doesn't mean much. I mean, you don't have to sell the data to sell being able to advertise using that data. It's very easy to get away with saying this and still provide data to 3rd parties or allow for advertising to target users.

My hope is that App.net is sincere. But unless they've hidden it, nothing on their site suggests they are doing what people say they are doing.

It's very accurate - If you do a poll, you will find that 90%+ don't see the money they are paying is for a "full year of App.net service" but money to encourage Dalton to try and do something interesting. If it was just for a full year of service, almost nobody would have put their money into App.net, I assure you.

It's an experiment akin to what was done with Diaspora, just this time with someone who has both the experience and the track record to demonstrate he can pull it off.

I understand what you are saying, but it is just a years worth of service. That's the only thing you are guaranteed. You are banking on good will and good karma to carry you.

> he can pull it off.

Pull what off? What is "something interesting?" You said it was a service where "the users are the customers instead of the advertisers." But nothing of the sort is promised.

> It's an experiment akin to what was done with Diaspora…

And we've learned nothing from that? You've given $50 for a years worth of service in return. You hope for more, and you hope for specific things, but none of that is promised.

What's so wrong with asking these expectations be clarified? Isn't that the entire point of App.net, to be different, to be about the users? If so, then why isn't that made clear?

Nothing I see promises anything different then you see with other social networks. Except in this one, you are paying them $50.

To me, this is the most important point to be made:

  "What promises have they made that can be enforced?"

Until legally binding promises are made for what will and won't be done, I can't really buy into this.

Also, I think it is reasonable to ask whether that $50 price will come down over time, because if we can't expect it to eventually drop to at most $1 per month, I don't see this ever getting any major adoption justifying the $50 investment now.

From my rough viewing of this page: http://appnetstats.com/

I'm seeing that "Unique users today" is around 10-15% of 17,500 at the end of the day.

Let's high ball that and say it has 3000 daily users (if we consider a user as someone who posts based on the "Unique users today" statistic).

The greatest challenge to the sustainability of App.net will come 1 year from now when all of the initial sign ups are up for renewal.

Who will click renew and who will say "Hmm, this cost me $50 and I didn't get $50 worth of value out of it over the past year. No thanks."?

A subscription based model is only a sustainable business model if people re-subscribe.

For me it doesn't offer anything new, even if it was free why would people use it over twitter which has millions of users and content. I doubt it will succeed unless they rethink it's purpose.

App.net got rolling when the Twitter started issuing letters suggesting that developers will no longer have wide-open access to their API, would be limited in the number of users they could have for their clients, and started sending advertisements into their stream.

If none of that matters to you, then, right now, Alpha / App.net will not have any value to you. Check back in six months when there are more applications and activity.

Most subscription based models are being kept sustainable by "don't ask" principles. If you don't ask to renew and silently charge the credit card (a la most saas solutions), few people would try to reverse this transaction.

App.net is a terrible name. They should change it.

Dalton agrees with you. I think he's leaning towards, "Alpha"

Just installed the app. Looks slick, but the tab bar is a bit too high for my taste. The Profile tab doesn't work for me, it returns a 'connection error' message. The Global feed, Timeline, and Mentions tabs work. Conversation view doesn't always load, especially when not connected over WiFi. Scrolling is as smooth as Twitter's app and it has infinite scroll. Oddly, the messages from user 'alpha' (App.net's App.net account) show up empty, while they contain content when viewed in the web interface.

Can someone tell me what app.net is? From the original description I figured it was some sort of "user feed as a service", but they seem to have actual users too, so I'm not sure what it is.

As a developer, I take not understanding what a developer-oriented service is as a bad sign for said service. Can someone elucidate?

It's just a Twitter clone, that charges users for membership, instead of monetizing them through ads or selling their data. A lot of people think that will lead to a better service, so it got a lot of hype recently.

Hmm, that's disappointing, especially after the initial post that was about Twitter's potential to become the web's real-time feed API.

The twitter clone is a proof of concept. A better description would be that its a paid social graph designed to be used by third party apps. Just like Facebook apps or apps that use twitter to sign on, app.net can be used as that identity- the difference being that app.net is promising not to put arbitrary restrictions on how it is used.

If you're not sure about joining the app.net bandwagon, it really is worth your fifty bucks. It's become a fun place to hang out over the last few weeks. It's like twitter, but reading the global feed is actually possible, and the tone of the place is more geeky. No spam either, which is always nice.

How is that different from following geeky twitter users on twitter? Other than you will have orders of magnitude more choice on twitter. I am not being a dick and trying to trash App.net but I can't see it's utility.

Does it have to look exactly like twitter though? It's already hard to describe what the hell the service is and why does it cost money, when it is basically twitter

It seems to me that the best way to make money from building apps is to do so for other people.

I think it's always been that way. There's an old hack:

> The best way to make money in a gold-rush is to sell shovels.

So App.NET is a twitter clone? They will need more that 17k users to compete.

Actually, App.net is quite useful already with it's 17k users (as was twitter when it had that many people).

It doesn't have to compete with Twitter, just provide a growing self sustaining user base of paying customers. Seems like an ok business strategy to me.

Will it last though? Seems to me that it's a lot about the novelty that's making people excited about app.net.

oh christ!

please change the name before it's too late

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