Dalton Caldwell: App.net is not Vaporware

Post by dasil003 » Wed, Aug 08, 2012, 11:20 PM UTC

jmathai wrote: post #75

streptomycin wrote: post #72

StatusNet is also not vaporware. Furthermore, it's also open source and federated rather than being yet another proprietary walled garden run by a corporation.

The thing with projects/apps/sites is that there's a threshold of time before it's considered passe. It's not logical and we in turn waste a lot of time and resources reinventing the wheel but that's the truth of the matter. I can't shake the feeling that this initiative suffers from the worst of both worlds. It's not entirely open AND it's a paid service.

Post by seagreen » Wed, Aug 08, 2012, 11:34 PM UTC

look_lookatme wrote: post #33

Just 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?

Post by wmf » Wed, Aug 08, 2012, 11:55 PM UTC

webjprgm wrote: post #83

quartus wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One thing to note is that our funding velocity is not linear, it has been picking up speed. If we can keep the momentum going and spread the word, we are confident that we will hit our goal. Regarding ads being not too annoying, people are backing app.net because of the larger goal: creating a service where the user is the customer rather than the product. This allows app.net to focus all of its resources on pleasing…

Would it work if the 3rd-party devs were the customers? I.e. anyone using XYZ's app gets in for free because XYZ company pays the usage fees (out of it's ad revenue). That would avoid app.net trying to shut down services that customers like. It would also improve user adoption since it's free to the user. But how does this model compare to the customer-centric one?

Post by catenate » Wed, Aug 08, 2012, 11:58 PM UTC

dasil003 wrote: post #89

catenate wrote: post #69

Can 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.

What app.net can do is offer you as a developer the credible promise that whatever you build on it will not be shut down because it conflicts with business decisions made 1, 5 or 10 years from now. This of course trickles down to the user, since you are virtually guaranteed that there will be new clients for as long as the service exists. With Twitter you are virtually guaranteed that no new client ideas will see the…

Post by ghshephard » Thu, Aug 09, 2012, 12:01 AM UTC

dasil003 wrote: post #81

jmduke wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Honest question: what stops you from simply browsing a twitter list of those twelve people? Or, more pragmatically: what incentive do I, a person who doesn't really care about 'openness' and uses Twitter for a billion other reasons anyway, have to pay $50 and subscribe to app.net instead of just following the twitter list of those twelve people?

The incentives are A) to hedge against future developments of Twitter throwing you under the bus for $0.50 and B) joining a social network of people who explicitly value that network who you believe will have a generally higher signal to noise ration than the unwashed masses. Today you can follow those 12 people, but if this takes off then it promises a return to the nostalgic '06 and '07 of Twitter when the communit…