Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

App.net is shutting down

blog.app.net

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 191 posts

Re: App.net is shutting down

#31

Post by unimpressive »

dalton wrote: post #17
ChuckMcM wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My sentiment exactly. And I agree with Dalton it was worth trying to see if it could fly. It raises a lot of interesting questions about the sustainability of the "app economy" for me.

I appreciate both of your sentiments, thank you. I continue to be at least somewhat optimistic that non ad-supported models are worth trying. It seems like Patreon is doing really well and is perhaps something we can all learn from.

Yeah, for app.net I think it was more chicken and egg that killed you than paid per se. Pay presents an especially difficult chicken and egg problem because not only do you have to get people to part with their time to sign up you have to ask them to pay for what may potentially be no value provided.

I remember trying to explain why it wasn't a stupid idea to people way back when it launched on HN, and had kind of assumed that it'd died years ago.

----

Hypothesis: If you can find a way to provide value while you build up the network, the product would do better.

Second hypothesis: If you can find a way to acquire valuable users with a low-effort funnel and 'leech' users with a paid funnel that would also make the product perform better.

Taking these as assumptions for a moment, this would imply a natural advantage for federated networks if they provide interoperability between different services that have value on their own without network effects.

Re: App.net is shutting down

#32

Post by rhizome »

grenoire wrote: post #2

Unfortunate. Goes to show that you really can't break even without ads or selling/analysing data with a centralised social network.

you really can't break even without ads or selling/analysing data with a centralised social network

I don't think we actually know that as a fact, it's just that not much else has been tried.

Re: App.net is shutting down

#33

Post by Analemma_ »

astrodust wrote: post #29

This reeked of being dead the day it launched, so it's hardly surpising, but it's also tragic. Why is it so hard to create a Twitter alternative that's popular and effective? Does the world tend to gravitate towards single standards for these things, like Facebook, HTTP or email?

Network effects, and the existing services being "good enough"

Re: App.net is shutting down

#34

Post by filmgirlcw »

I applaud Dalton and Bryan for keeping ADN running for nearly 3 years after it ceased development. In truth, I think most of the users left back in May 2014, but it's still admirable that they kept it running.

If you'll excuse the self-plug, I wrote about the death of ADN back in 2014 and re-reading my post, I think it holds up.

http://mashable.com/2014/05/08/app-net-potential/#P8.bAcE8NO...

Re: App.net is shutting down

#35

Post by xwowsersx »

kylec wrote: post #10

This is an unfortunate, but not unexpected, end of an era. App.net was created at a time when discontent was high with how Twitter was treating its users and 3rd party app developers. Even though App.net wasn't hugely successful, its existence provided a needed check against Twitter exercising user-hostile control over their platform. However, it has not been a viable platform (one that people actually used) for many…

It provided a check? How?

Re: App.net is shutting down

#36

Post by paulcole »

dgfgfdagasdfgfa wrote: post #9
hkmurakami wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

or put another way, "people don't want to pay for most things"

Or to put it another way, people care more about money than their own privacy.

Yep. I have a limited amount of money that I need to spend on more essential purchases. I'll happily trade my data/privacy for the right frivolity.

When someone starts letting me pay for groceries with my browser history sign me up.

Re: App.net is shutting down

#37

Post by jorgemf »

less than 50000 downloads in Android and 60 reviews in AppStore in 5 years. I think you can get better numbers without marketing.

Seriously, whatever you do, you need to spend the same amount of time promoting it, otherwise no one will notice. 50000 downloads is nothing in 5 years, it is 2.7 users a day. If you are in SanFrancisco you can get more than 3 downloads a day just going to the street and talking with strangers.

And they got 2.5M in their series A. https://index.co/company/AppDotNet?utm_source=thenextweb.com

Where were their budget for marketing? At least I would have expected 500k in marketing and 1$ per install, them we can talk about the users not liking the product or whatever.

UPDATE: you can keep downvoting (I would appreciate a feedback comment to explain the downvote) but it doesn't change the fact that marketing is more important than the product and they didn't spend on it

Re: App.net is shutting down

#39

Post by Stratoscope »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #21
nicholasjbs wrote: post #7

This is a refreshingly honest shutdown notice. Congratulations to Dalton and co for trying something hard and worthwhile, and wrapping it up responsibly when it didn't pan out.

Also it's pretty awesome to see a shutdown accompanied with an open sourcing. If every startup did this, we'd have a ton more open source code out there to play with.

> If every startup did this...

But then every startup would have to shut down!

Post reply on HN