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Comment by diego | Hacker News Reader

That's like saying that John Deere won't be a successful company because most people won't buy tractors.

Sort of. The perception is that app.net is going up against Twitter. In your comparison, that's like saying that John Deere can outsell Ford.

However, the more realistic view is that app.net will remain a niche service, but one that suits techies very well. So, yes, John Deere will corner the market in tractors, but never branch out to cars.

Your perception and inference are both wrong. App.net isn't just going up against twitter, but rather the entire social networking paradigm where I have multiple signups and not enough use. If we use app.net to login to most major services and post, like I have to do with twitter, facebook and linkedin right now, I get away with a single login.

What'll drive adoption? The developer incentive program. This also answers your John Deere example... There will be a lot of offsprings from App.net. In a rudimentary tone - a fb-clone, an instagram clone, comments systems (bit.ly/qbdebut)etc...

I talked about Twitter specifically because the OP talked about Twitter specifically.

I don't doubt that there will be lots of offsprings from app.net, I'm just dubious about whether they'll gain any traction. "You only have to use one username/password!" isn't enough to get people to spend $5 a month.

I don't think that app.net is selling an identity service that will take off or be worthwhile, but I strenuously disagree with the assertion that people won't pay for single sign in on the Internet.

It is, in my opinion, the number one pain point on the web today. It affects users of all technical levels and the more you have invested in the web the worse it gets.

Ah, single sign-in... also offered by Twitter, Facebook, Google, Firefox, my email address...

I don't disagree that people might pay for it, but why would it by App.net I'd pay? Why would they even pay though? You can trust the App.net developers? No more than those listed, realistically.

Sounds like an opportunity to charge people to set up their OpenID and use your revenue to get more companies to implement it.

Disclaimer: I don't know much about building websites and I don't understand why OpenID hasn't got more traction.

If OpenID was a tractor, we would need to have a PHD in astrophysics to understand how to drive it successfully.

No, it's like saying that John Deere won't be successful because a competitor is giving out Nascar tractors for free.

That's like saying app.net makes similar revenue per user as John Deere from a sale of a tractor.

A tractor is useful to a person just from buying it… app.net is only useful to a person if enough other people also buy it.

Your vehicle analogy completely falls apart and really on Hacker News do we have to simplify tech products down to car analogies…

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