I used to, but don't anymore. It's like Google Plus, it's just spam on there (it seems like). Or it's just a bunch of tweets pushed to it, which defeats the purpose.
Ask HN: do you use App.net?
31–40 of 49 posts
Re: Ask HN: do you use App.net?
#32no, Dalton is toast. UnemploymentPlz.
Re: Ask HN: do you use App.net?
#33I never really got what app.net is. Is there someone subscribed? Can you explain more?
Seems to be like Pinterest, without the pin. I don't get it, either.
Re: Ask HN: do you use App.net?
#34Earlier quoted context omitted.
App.net is not a twitter substitute, and I think it was a huge mistake for them to direct new users to the "Alpha" app which is a twitter clone. But if you’ve heard of App.net at all, you probably equate it with a Twitter clone. It’s not.... “App.net is a social platform,” says the company’s founder and CEO Dalton Caldwell. “It’s your passport to a social network of great applications. I’m trying to get the idea acro…
People keep saying that, and yet I have no idea what else it does. "Your passport to a social network of great applications" is meaningless corpbabble.
App.net is a platform for writing social apps that all share the same social network. Try browsing the app directory https://directory.app.net/apps/web-clients/ or the API http://developers.app.net/ whichever answers your curiosity better.
Re: Ask HN: do you use App.net?
#35I always hear talk about "if you're not paying for it, you're not the customer". App.net was designed to solve that: you pay for it, so there's no ads, no privacy intrusions, and no worries about who is selling you to whom. I guess the experiment failed, and free-to-play wins out.
I think it's hard to get people to pay money for something they might not even use. I get the impression that people create twitter accounts on a whim, because if you don't use it then you've lost nothing. If you do use it to the point where you might be willing to pay then you're already locked into the free service.
Re: Ask HN: do you use App.net?
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
People keep saying that, and yet I have no idea what else it does. "Your passport to a social network of great applications" is meaningless corpbabble.
App.net is a platform for writing social apps that all share the same social network. Try browsing the app directory https://directory.app.net/apps/web-clients/ or the API http://developers.app.net/ whichever answers your curiosity better.
So it's Twitter+Dropbox? Still not seeing what's so interesting or different.
Re: Ask HN: do you use App.net?
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
I get that it's a "passport to a social network of great applications". But, as far as I can tell, that social network is still centralized, no? Am I missing something?
Yeah, it's centralized. It's a storage space with a nice API for putting contacts, conversations, photos, etc. Edit: it also has a nice big "export data" button that will dump all of your data from all app.net applications you use.
Yeah, and that's a big problem.
If I'm motivated to move away from existing social networks for any reason, it's because they are centralized...
The fact that app.net is/was pay-to-play doesn't eliminate the issues of free-to-play at all: it still has the same issues (and moreover: less virality) but now I'm paying for them.
Re: Ask HN: do you use App.net?
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
App.net is a platform for writing social apps that all share the same social network. Try browsing the app directory https://directory.app.net/apps/web-clients/ or the API http://developers.app.net/ whichever answers your curiosity better.
So it's Twitter+Dropbox? Still not seeing what's so interesting or different.
Yeah, except twitter doesn't like 3rd party clients, and Dropbox doesn't know about your twitter network.
Re: Ask HN: do you use App.net?
#39I used to, but don't anymore. It's like Google Plus, it's just spam on there (it seems like). Or it's just a bunch of tweets pushed to it, which defeats the purpose.
The Global feed is depressing. It's almost entirely spam. Not like "hey, check out this article I wrote" kind of spam, but more "cheap nike shoes gucci purses prada http://example.com".
There's some neat Dropbox-like apps that make use of the API, but I don't know enough people who use App.net to give the social features an edge over Dropbox's ubiquity.
Re: Ask HN: do you use App.net?
#40Earlier quoted context omitted.
So it's Twitter+Dropbox? Still not seeing what's so interesting or different.
Yeah, except twitter doesn't like 3rd party clients, and Dropbox doesn't know about your twitter network.
Right, but a third-party app that talks to both Twitter and Dropbox can integrate them both easily enough.
As far as liking third party clients goes, that's the sort of thing I'm getting at when I say that App.net doesn't solve what I see as the root problem with Twitter. Not liking third-party clients is just a symptom of centralization, and App.net just happens to solve this one symptom without addressing the root problem.