How App.net Plans To Power The Next Viral Social App | Hacker News Reader

How App.net Plans To Power The Next Viral Social App

technologyreview.com

27 pointssk2code35 comments

Right now a lot of the folks on App.net are worried about the future of App.net. This conversation (from a week ago) was interesting:

https://alpha.app.net/po/post/2549224#2546963

Some highlights:

steven_aquino I'm still confused as to why ADN is doomed.

jonf @steven_aquino cause only 6% of the users post on a daily basis, and we've only had 7,000 new users in the last 3 and a half months compared to 23,000 the first 3 months.

jonf @steven_aquino are 2000 users enough to keep it going?

lkrubner @alicia @steven_aquino - is ADN doomed? Where do you think we are on this curve? http://www.avc.com/a_vc/2012/03/the-startup-curve.html

alicia @lkrubner Trough of sorrow.

alicia @duerig The more we wait, the more we can't replace the people who drop out. You don't wait for the story to be complete; you do it now because every delay costs.

saket @orian @duerig @alicia @steven_aquino @jonf After the original push for funding, my feeling is that ADN has turned away from focussing on "an ad-free social network" and is putting greater focus on ADN as an API for new social services.

blenderhead @saket @orian I think a more pressing issue is new member retention. Take care of that and word of mouth takes care of the rest. I still feel it’s hard for most folks to jump in to the flow here without current user-initiated engagement.

konrad @saket @orian In a way, app.net feels like “the old internet” to me. What Usenet was in its heyday, before Endless September. So app.net really is infrastructure – and the people who are there is what is actually appealing.

saket @mattischrome Thanks. :) To boil it down: either aggressively market/drive/promulgate the user community, or the API & get those killer apps built so new users get pulled in. The seeming waiting is killing ADN.

saket @po I'd agree if there was some magic social service being developed that'd make ADN the hot new place to be on the internets. Maybe that dev is walking around somewhere, or that project is being built right now. But I'm here for the community, not the API

saket ADN and it's API seems to be built on the concept of "build it and they shall come". It's not a bad ideal, but what to do if no one does come?

po @saket Then that's it. It ends. We save $36 a year :)

alicia @teawithcarl I don't see the level of effort needed, which is leading me to think that Alpha was created as a test, not meant to be permanent. Perhaps its demise is factored in. And that's perfectly okay. ADN is more than Alpha. 2/2 @duerig

bashfulpixie @prometheus so if impression is Twitter and ADN are the same, why pay for one when other is FREE? That is the problem: Non-ADN users thing ADN is just another twitter, with a LOT fewer users that costs money to use. So question is: WHY?

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There are 2 ways to interpret the above conversation:

1.) App.net is doomed because its growth has slowed and it still has less than 30,000 members.

2.) App.net has a bright future because its membership is so dedicated and smart and working hard to figure out how to make it a success.

For most people, it doesn't solve a pain point they have. This type of social network, for most people, is simply just nice to have, but not worth paying for.

For some people, it's exactly what they need and solves their pain (or at least would if there are sufficient number of other users). But there's not enough of them, and the low number of such users isn't enough to sustain a commercial company or a social community.

App.net is one of the only tech services I've paid for and from which I'd like my money back. I'm assuming they don't do pro-rated refunds for a reason.

You can't just post that and not include the problem.

Is this from an end-user or developer perspective?

A marketer from App.net reached out to me so I figured I'd share below what I told him. This is my experience, and I doubt it's representative of the majority of people. I was merely venting frustration about a refund process that (apparently) requires a special incantation via email support.

As for feedback, from an end-user experience I have not found the product very compelling, certainly given the price. The API is great but that doesn't really matter if I'm not interested in using the product. When I signed up amid the hype I guess I misunderstood the product and in the meantime hoped it to evolve into something it has not -- namely, an infrastructure-y social layer that I could build into other apps and not a closed social network with a high barrier to entry.

Like others, I'd love to hear more about your experiences with it.

Without at least a limited free tier, I don't see App.net taking off... I do like some of the things they've done, even paid for a year developer sub, but don't plan on continuing.. just isn't worth it to me.

Maybe they're just limiting their growth right now? I would agree that a dropbox revenue model in the future would be a lot better (especially considering how much they're comparing themselves to dropbox).

Exactly. I personally have seen no truly compelling reason to pay for this service. I just don't see it (for me).

I've read somewhere that there is a possibility of free accounts in the future. However, there is nothing certain right now.

For one thing, they should allow anyone who subscribes to develop, especially when it's still in an early-adopter phase and developing for this network is a hobby interest at best until it grows.

It's especially discouraging to developers who might play around with this because they have the time, but now the money, such as random kids.

I never really understood the hype around App.net. It's a product that doesn't solve any problem or pain point, neither does it address any need or want that Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and Google+ can't fix. And those for are free.

It's an ideological product. Ideological products can work if the psychological benefits to adhering to the ideology outweigh the price premium, e.g. Tom's shoes. App.net, it appears, espouses a libertarian hacker ideology. It got a lot of people excited in the libertarian hacker community - there is your hype. The psychological value, however, has failed to clear the price premium.

Well, in the Tom's shoes comparison, if I want other shoes, they still cost money. Comparing to what I would consider fairly fashionable shoes (which I would include Tom's in), the premium is not too great.

On the other hand, App.net is a matter of paying at all vs not. The threshold from free to even $1 is quite large (see: iOS App Store)

I will probably get downvoted for this, but I still don't get App.net. Can someone explain to me how I would actually convince all my friends to jump ship from other social networks and pay money to do effectively the same thing?

This is why App.Net will fail.

You will find it hard, rather impossible, to convince young adults, college students, and parents to pay for a service that's already provided for free--especially when the paid service is a dead-end.

I don't like Facebook, but I have an account to talk with friends and shoot the shit with people I don't want to have a personal relationship with. If all those friends were not there (as is the case with App.Net), what would I do? Play with all the cool features all day? Tell people how cool it is to "own" my content?

If people do not come, I will never come. See the catch-22?

App.Net should cut it now. AWESOME idea, but will not happen.

It is so weird to read stuff like: "When these apps get acquired [like Instagram did by Facebook], users don’t get to choose how to access their data" but no mention about what happens if app.net gets acquired like Instagram did by Facebook.

And then "openness and control over your own social-media content" how is it more open then Facebook or Twitter where you, exactly like on App.net, can download your content as a JSON file or something like that but you can't do anything with it anymore after that. You can't just go to a different provider and you can't either host it yourself, like you can for example with email, because then you can't play with the other users anymore. You have either to stay and pay or leve and make your data worthless, just some JSON file on your computers hard drive. That is not openess and control over your own social-media content, that is exactly the opposite, it is exactly what Facebook and Twitter do too.

If you really are interested in openess and controll over your own social-media content then you will need to take a different approach. I myself like how Tent ( https://tent.io ) does it. There you're really in controll. If you don't like one provider for whatever reason, just move your content automatically to some other provider, or even, like I do, host your own server without any drawbacks. You still have your network of friends you still get their updates, you still have the data you put into it, you still can use the same applications, etc.

The trouble with proprietary social networks is not just that they mostly rely on advertising but that they are proprietary. So is app.net and you have to pay for it, too. Why would I pay to be confined in yet another (and very small) walled garden?

Meanwhile: http://www.theverge.com/2013/1/30/3933144/dropbox-unveils-so...

Ignoring all of the other facets of app.net, because it's a paid service this almost by definition limits it's virality. I can't imagine that Vine or Instagram would have taken off if it required a subscription of $36/year or $5/month.

Secondly, what is the benefit to the app developers themselves? Platform lock-in is one of the strongest tools that they have to wield, why would they willing give that up to avoid paying for an S3 bucket?

a great example of a solution in search of a problem. maybe i'll be eating my words but everything app.net does continues to scream that they are living in a bubble where many people actually care about things like data portability and privacy. few people do. they can carve out a niche perhaps but most things i hear about app.net is how they are going to take over the world. i'm not seeing it.

There's no "niche", I want to talk with my friends, not a bunch of people talking about security. You know?

They dont even need to remain a paid subscription service if they created an html5/JS/webGL based appstore that would integrate closely to their service. Imagine a fb where you could install custom widgets into the interface that more reflected your personal tastes.

Of course, fb makes money off apps and advertises. They nickle and dime.

Like the old facebook, durring the era of Superpoke and SuperWall?

App.net probably generated too much hype initially and attacked a broader market. If it has to focus on a narrow market who are willing to pay, what would that be?

All of the other 'backup' storage providers seem to be going in this direction. It'll be a battle to the lowest cost system. Free usually attracts the most people.

app.net is just a cool name

It's a terrible name. It has nothing to do with apps.

I agree that app.net is an awkward name, but you're wrong about it not being about apps: It's developed explicitly as a platform on top of which apps can be built. Hence the File API.

The Twitter-like interface you see when going to the site is Alpha, an app built on top of the app.net services. Similarly there are apps like Patter which go in other directions, creating an IRC-like environment.

Dalton is very patient, damn frugal, and smart. His API programming team is off-the-charts talented (essentially 14 Stanford and Carnegie Mellon guys), and here's the important part - they get along very, very well. So, the team is tight, and thinking long term.

They've got a rock-solid cash position, and I wouldn't be surprised for Marc Andreessen to re-invest after 2 years, just to own a piece of this flex infrastructure for such a small $ amount.

Today's announcement is exactly what's next. Building more ways to "roll your own social network". The API is amazingly rich - the developers love it.

For example, messaging is far beyond Twitter's broken DM mechanism. The API allows you to DEFINE messaging protocols, and uniquely build a social network with a distinct message system. It's software-definable, via the API.

What's actually happened in the first 5-1/2 months is that the "core API" is finally finished. They've actually unbundled all the core social 2.0 infrastructures.

Watch for more creative "edge API" ideas (like this social Dropbox) to come out, now that the core team of 14 is freeing up to invent.

I could swear I read this exact same comment, word for word, in the last few days on HN.

He posted the same comment earlier on the App.net File announcement

essentially 14 Stanford and Carnegie Mellon guys

I'd love to be proved wrong, but I imagine that funding isn't going to last for too long with that many developers.

I'm making a social app right now, as it happens. I will never use an API that requires every user to buy a subscription to it- simple as that.

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