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App.net is shutting down

blog.app.net

161–170 of 191 posts

Re: App.net is shutting down

#161

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But every other platform has that as well. It is just that twitter only has that option.

Facebook has become much less interesting once it started constantly reminding people about privacy options and almost everyone went from default-public to default-friends, or often even more restrictive settings.

They only did that due to user demand though. People didn't want their private life wide open for the world to see.

Re: App.net is shutting down

#162
post #37

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 stran…

I don't mean to pick on you, but this is getting tiring for me. When you say 'marketing' you mean advertising and promotion, because product definition is part of marketing. Sizing up the market and determining what to build is marketing (inbound), advertising and promotion is also marketing (outbound). I realize these definitions have been in flux, but I'm talking traditional MBA definitions. I feel a lot nuance is…

> I don't mean to pick on you, but this is getting tiring for me. When you say 'marketing' you mean advertising and promotion, because product definition is part of marketing.

Well, you shouldn't judge me so fast. I have an MBA with marketing and I have been working on marketing for some time in my life. So I am aware what a marketing plan involves, and promotion is a small portion of it. I cannot suppose the founders knew all about marketing, but I would expect them to spend some money in promotion even if it not wise money.

Maybe you like this more. You have to do some marketing: define your product, know your users, define your goals, find the channels where your users are, target them, promote your product to those users in those channels, measure the results, analyze what happened and rinse and repeat. (that was also a small definition because marketing is still more)

Re: App.net is shutting down

#163
post #89
post #45

App.net combined two big ideas: 1. Social networks are important enough that a subscription model is viable 2. Social networks should be built on a platform for social network applications Obviously neither idea could save app.net. Which idea caused most of the problems?

I suspect 1 is the big turnoff. It's really hard to make people pay for something they can get for free, with a better perceived value. App.net promised to have value in the future, but demanded payment upfront. Twitter offers immediate value without demanding any form of payment.

I sort of agree. App.net lacked value at launch because of the way it intended to build value - through apps on it's platform. That's inevitably slow just when you need to build take-off momentum, and there is no way to "prime the pump" except by throwing money at the problem and hoping you get the right apps.

Moreover, Twitter has a problem with churn. It's free to start, but baffling for many, and troll-infested if you stick around. All ad-supported social networks have that problem plus the invasiveness issue.

Re: App.net is shutting down

#164
post #45

App.net combined two big ideas: 1. Social networks are important enough that a subscription model is viable 2. Social networks should be built on a platform for social network applications Obviously neither idea could save app.net. Which idea caused most of the problems?

#1, but not inherently as much as for the effect it had on the consequences of other decisions: they launched with a hard pay-wall for the first couple years and that made the identity crisis fatal. They got a good deal of initial publicity but the first thing anyone curious got was a requirement that they pay to use it. That's always going to be a hard sell but it was especially bad when the messaging was so confused about whether it was a platform to build apps on, a Twitter competitor, etc. since the cost was real and up-front but any benefits were largely hypothetical based on enough other people deciding to pay at all and some of them building apps.

I think a subscription model could be viable with better execution but it really seems like that would be best with a tiered approach so the social network wasn't held back by the payment requirement.

Re: App.net is shutting down

#165
IIRC YC had a bet in the subscription social network space for "family social networks." That has obvious problems with the growth model, similar to but different from Path which had an arbitrary limit on individuals' number of "true friends." Path was taking the word "friend" too literally. That got pivoted and/or rolled up. Where is it now?

Re: App.net is shutting down

#166
post #138
post #54

So to recap, Twitter exploded onto the scene in 2007, the "fail whale" appeared a lot, developers made all sorts of wonderful programs hooked into Twitter, the fail whale disappeared, Twitter started to destroy the app ecosystem, App.net launched to great fanfare in response to Twitter's knuckleheaded anti-developer stance, Britney Spears and Justin Bieber arrived and knocked all the nerds out of the top spots on Twi…

Twitter has no issue making money: They made over a billion last year. Their problem is in growing: They have about the same users they had 2 years ago.

Maybe Twitter is fully grown. There will be some churn, but it's basically as big as it's going to get. With the current user base, they can generate billions of dollars in revenue.

The problem, then, seems to be with management and the board not understanding or maybe not accepting reality as it is. If they can figure out how to run Twitter with hundreds of people rather than thousands, they will have a great business.

Re: App.net is shutting down

#168
I feel strange that this is the first time I've ever heard of app.net. I assumed it was something Microsoft related, apparently not. I suspect the combination of these things is why this failed.

Re: App.net is shutting down

#169
post #134

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I just looked at their community guidelines and saw this: Non-U.S. residents and citizens must follow the laws of their domicile pertaining to online conduct, communication and content. Gab AI, Inc. will respect the territorial sovereignty of nation-states and their applicable laws pertaining to online communications, though we urge governments of the world to consider Articles 18, 19 and 20 of the Universal Declarat…

Free speech for the western world. Their admins are right-wing, so they are respectful of the sovereignty of all states and their laws/customs, as expected from people from the right. On the other hand, there's Mastodon/GNU Social (what GP recommended) for people from the left, where they ban fascists/nazis, but they apply the same rules to users from all countries, as expected from people from the left. It makes me…

Mastodon the software is not politically aligned. mastodon.social the flagship instance of the developer (me) that simply runs/demonstrates the latest code, is, in this case, leaning left. You can run your own.

Re: App.net is shutting down

#170
post #156
post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How do you figure that? 1) VCs own hardly any shared of Twitter[1] 2) Stock grants are used as compensation for people working at Twitter, NOT something that benefits investors (except in the sense people are working at the company the investors invested in I guess). It's easy to blame VCs for everything, but I don't see how this makes any sense at all in this case. [1] http://www.recode.net/2016/8/11/12417064/twitte…

Didn't USV invest in Twitter? Did they cash out after IPO?

>Didn't USV invest in Twitter?

They sure did. Fred Wilson (USV partner) has talked about it (Twitter as a portfolio company of USV) many times on his blog avc.com .

>Did they cash out after IPO?

Not sure.

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