@dalton you need to pimp up the alpha design. That counts too, if you want a larger audience.
Dalton Caldwell: App.net is not Vaporware
61–70 of 130 posts
Re: Dalton Caldwell: App.net is not Vaporware
#62Earlier quoted context omitted.
So what's the business model? Are there enough developers willing to pay real money for access to an API? It seems hard enough to get developers to actually buy a license for Sublime or TextMate (or even pay $0.99 for a song on iTunes.) I could see some potential in the enterprise space to license out the API for companies to then build their own information services atop of.. but that seems to get away from the "pow…
Exactly. People would consider a mobile apps outside 99 cents mark as expensive, even more so if it costs you $50
Some / many people would not consider an app that cost more than 99cents expensive, and having a barrier to exclude those that do isn't necessarily a bad thing.
Re: Dalton Caldwell: App.net is not Vaporware
#63I think it's going to be very hard to pull this off. I feel like Dalton is living in a bubble of people who are willing to pay to avoid ads. But for most everyone else, a social network with ads (that are not TOO annoying) is much better than one that ask for your money. He might be able to find enough people to pay to become a profitable business but I doubt he will ever reach facebook or twitter like scale. And if…
I think the real bubble is people ignoring the existence of status.net and identi.ca, and the reasons why they never took off as alternatives to twitter.
Status.net has evolved into a private twitter for companies but the identica service still runs, still has a user base, and is everything you need for an alternative to twitter.
Re: Dalton Caldwell: App.net is not Vaporware
#64SERIOUSLY, FUCK YOU DALTON. Now that I've got that out of my system... Learn yourself some fucking statistics. Considering that you're a programmer/hacker (well, maybe by some loose definition of the word, but at least you like to think you are) you should at least know SOME math. Statistics isn't that hard. Have you figured out why you're a miserable piece of shit yet? That's right, it's because you got the statisti…
Yeah, that Mac OS X thing. No-one buys that. Jeez.
What exactly do you mean by that?
Re: Dalton Caldwell: App.net is not Vaporware
#65I think it's going to be very hard to pull this off. I feel like Dalton is living in a bubble of people who are willing to pay to avoid ads. But for most everyone else, a social network with ads (that are not TOO annoying) is much better than one that ask for your money. He might be able to find enough people to pay to become a profitable business but I doubt he will ever reach facebook or twitter like scale. And if…
API Access , 400 daily active users and its gonna be a funtastic service for eejits* who like machine learning, personalization etc. * Me.
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Re: Dalton Caldwell: App.net is not Vaporware
#66Earlier quoted context omitted.
If you took Facebook and Twitter making a few people mad lately out of the equation, this is a mediocre idea at best. I think its feeding off of people's temporary anger at the situation. I think it will pass.
The economics behind the app.net idea are way beyond mediocre. Charging users for a platform capable of hosting a wide range of apps and compensating developers with revenue share based on usage aligns everyone's interests with the users. The platform provides the best infrastructure and the app developers are incentivised to create lasting value for users, since they keep getting paid for as long as people keep usin…
Some of the smartest people in tech have supported a ton of failures. Every VC on the planet has a long list of "the next big thing" that never went anywhere. I don't necessarily care if some of the "smartest" people in tech are backing it. App.net has raised under $300,000 -- if it was THAT awesome, they would have raised the full $500K almost instantly. Fred Wilson would have just just wrote a check for the whole thing. They might like the idea, but if there was a viable business model there would have been a frenzy if the proposed product was that awesome. I still can't understand how this is supposed to make money. And giving someone a $50 or $100 or $1000 pledge on Kickstarter is pocket change for tech luminaries. They're likely supporting the founders more than a specific implementation. I don't know many people actually salivating over this or else they wouldn't be needing Kickstarter.
More power to the founders, I'm just skeptical because it still isn't clear what this project is supposed to accomplish. It's almost like Occupy got involved in a software project to vent anger over the big companies acting in ways with which they disagree.
Still, good luck to the App.net team. I hope they succeed and I'm proven to be an ignorant Luddite!
Re: Dalton Caldwell: App.net is not Vaporware
#67I think a paid model will be the only way forward for the set of people that value privacy and control over their data. I dont know that app.net hits the right ($) spot for that user group. The implication of facebook's revenue is that users are willing to trade privacy and data ownership for about $4/yr (the current monetization rate of a facebook user), which means getting to $50/yr seems somewhat arbitrary and har…
>> I think at some point in the future people will see $50/yr for those two things (privacy and data control) as a relative bargain.
I can't remember ever hearing anyone mention privacy/data control issues outside of HN. Facebook has ridden slipshod over these issues many times and yet I've never heard anyone bring them up in conversation. The echo chamber here is booming with concern but who actually cares? Users care about the communication advantages of their online accounts but how many value the identity associated with them? People change their phone number because they want a new model that isn't available on their network. Do they see their online identities as any less interchangeable? If this is the case what kind of explicit threat could possibly justify paying money for protection of such an identity?
Re: Dalton Caldwell: App.net is not Vaporware
#68Just to be clear, app.net is a centralized messaging service, to be owned and operated as a private company, allowing integration to whoever it sees fit, at whatever cost it sees fit? The upside is they promise not to show ads?
No, the upside is that as app.net relies on people paying money, the users are customers instead of being the product.
What's the product then?
Re: Dalton Caldwell: App.net is not Vaporware
#69Can anyone yet point to something done with app.net that twitter won't or can't do? $50 is a lot to pay for something that so far acts just like twitter. Without those new and interesting apps, which right now do appear to be vaporware, it's not worth a premium over twitter. I don't think clients that just show you the feed or your feed count, because twitter can do that.
Re: Dalton Caldwell: App.net is not Vaporware
#70I think it's going to be very hard to pull this off. I feel like Dalton is living in a bubble of people who are willing to pay to avoid ads. But for most everyone else, a social network with ads (that are not TOO annoying) is much better than one that ask for your money. He might be able to find enough people to pay to become a profitable business but I doubt he will ever reach facebook or twitter like scale. And if…
I disagree. It's not about the ads directly really. It's about the fact that the ads will dictate the fate of the service. To survive, the service has to go where the customers (which are not the users, but the companies buying ad space) wants it to be. Just look at Twitter: in order to monetize, they will eventually block third party apps from using the service, which is bad for the users, because Twitter's own apps…
To survive, the service has to go where the customers (which are not the users, but the companies buying ad space) wants it to be.
That is not entirely accurate either. In order to have any customers, even by your definition, twitter must continue to have lots of users. So there is already a checks and balance system of sorts in place such that if twitter goes too far in the direction of addressing advertisers while hurting the users, the users may jump ship causing the advertisers to do the same as well.