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App.net funded with $500,000.

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Re: App.net funded with $500,000.

#51

Post by cmod »

1. Awesome to see this funded.

2. Curious to see all the post-funding pile-on. Looks like their subscribers are jumping quite quickly (for a Sunday!) now that funding has been met. Funding validation makes it feel like a safer 'bet' now?

3. Really curious to see if app.net can scale better than Twitter from the start. I'm talking full archives, proper search, robust conversation tracking. If app.net covers these areas sufficiently well, I could see this becoming a go-to feed for journalists / other people for whom proper archives and full-search would be invaluable.

Re: App.net funded with $500,000.

#52

Post by loceng »

unimpressive wrote: post #39
dj2stein9 wrote: post #31

A centralized social network is what's wrong. Despite their best intentions they're still going to have all their users and developers by the balls. This absolutely will not replace Facebook or Twitter, it'll be just another one of the dozens of copycats like Path. What really needs to happen is an open decentralized protocol needs to be agreed upon for newsfeeds + blog posts (wordpress) + microblog (twitter). Then e…

> What really needs to happen is an open decentralized protocol needs to be agreed upon for newsfeeds + blog posts (wordpress) + microblog (twitter). Then everyone can write their own servers and clients and operate in a manner like Email currently works. Then do it. Make everyone look like idiots for not doing it sooner. Make it so cool I have to sign up.

I'm guessing people are working on it. It's not an easy problem to solve though.

Re: App.net funded with $500,000.

#53

Post by achompas »

dkrich wrote: post #30

I'm not really sure what the purpose of this service is. Could somebody please explain? I'm not trying to be a dick. I myself wouldn't pay to use Facebook minus the ads. I barely use it as it is. I only pay for things that provide me with some utility. The description of "a paid, real-time social feed" is vague and ambiguous.

I'm not really sure what the purpose of this service is. ... I myself wouldn't pay to use Facebook minus the ads.

You answered your own question above, and also identified why app.net won't interest you. If you're okay with ads, then I think you'd get zero utility from app.net

Re: App.net funded with $500,000.

#54

Post by anu_gupta »

icebraining wrote: post #36
dave_sullivan wrote: post #22

That's pretty amazing. Clearly app.net is tapping into something that people are starting to feel pretty strongly about--the benefits of "free" aren't necessarily worth the consequences in the longterm. I could see a similar model of aligning user/company interests rather than advertiser/company interests working for other services--email probably being the biggest that comes to mind. This is actually a good thing fo…

Clearly app.net is tapping into something that people are starting to feel pretty strongly about--the benefits of "free" aren't necessarily worth the consequences in the longterm. Well, maybe. Let's remember that Twitter has more than a hundred million accounts, while App.net has ~7500; we have no evidence that the people feeling that are not just a small number of outliers, much like there always will be.

Yup, it's easy to get caught up in the euphoria of reaching an arbitrary target. Still, I'm hopeful.

Re: App.net funded with $500,000.

#55

Post by guscost »

dkrich wrote: post #30

I'm not really sure what the purpose of this service is. Could somebody please explain? I'm not trying to be a dick. I myself wouldn't pay to use Facebook minus the ads. I barely use it as it is. I only pay for things that provide me with some utility. The description of "a paid, real-time social feed" is vague and ambiguous.

The community and interactions made possible by this general feed will supposedly create the value. It makes sense to me, information is my entire life and I'd pay $50/year for a network that was even a tiny bit better than Facebook/Twitter.

Re: App.net funded with $500,000.

#56

Post by guscost »

aculver wrote: post #4

I love this. In years past, Dalton and his team were able to raise millions in funding from a top-tier venture capital firm. But raising $500,000 in revenue from his target customers, that's a whole different ball game! Super excited to see where this goes. Congratulations to Dalton and the whole team!

This is awesome, it even looks like the "funding bar" graphic breaks when it gets to 100%...

Brilliant.

Re: App.net funded with $500,000.

#58

Post by dkrich »

achompas wrote: post #53
dkrich wrote: post #30

I'm not really sure what the purpose of this service is. Could somebody please explain? I'm not trying to be a dick. I myself wouldn't pay to use Facebook minus the ads. I barely use it as it is. I only pay for things that provide me with some utility. The description of "a paid, real-time social feed" is vague and ambiguous.

I'm not really sure what the purpose of this service is. ... I myself wouldn't pay to use Facebook minus the ads. You answered your own question above, and also identified why app.net won't interest you. If you're okay with ads, then I think you'd get zero utility from app.net

I appreciate the response, but that doesn't really answer the question of what the service provides that Facebook or Twitter doesn't.

Are ads in and of themselves really a huge problem? I don't find myself often annoyed by them. Now if there were a systemic change to the service because you didn't have to alter the experience for users to generate ad revenue, then I begin to understand. However if this is the idea, then in what ways the service would be different is exactly what I'm trying to figure out.

Remember, there are two sides to the coin "we offer a better experience without the ads" method. First of all you are going to get a smaller user base. So how much are you going to charge? $5/month? $10/month? You would need to get a pretty massive user base to be able to pay the overhead and attract top engineering talent, so in the end I'm not sure you'd be a whole lot better off.

Re: App.net funded with $500,000.

#59

Post by dave_sullivan »

icebraining wrote: post #36
dave_sullivan wrote: post #22

That's pretty amazing. Clearly app.net is tapping into something that people are starting to feel pretty strongly about--the benefits of "free" aren't necessarily worth the consequences in the longterm. I could see a similar model of aligning user/company interests rather than advertiser/company interests working for other services--email probably being the biggest that comes to mind. This is actually a good thing fo…

Clearly app.net is tapping into something that people are starting to feel pretty strongly about--the benefits of "free" aren't necessarily worth the consequences in the longterm. Well, maybe. Let's remember that Twitter has more than a hundred million accounts, while App.net has ~7500; we have no evidence that the people feeling that are not just a small number of outliers, much like there always will be.

We'll see if this idea is capable of jumping from internet nerdom to the mainstream, but mainstream users are also becoming more and more aware of the actual cost of 'free' products.

I agree. I'm not in the business of predicting the future, but it's worth noting that Twitter did not start with more than a hundred million accounts.

Re: App.net funded with $500,000.

#60

Post by chimi »

dkrich wrote: post #58
achompas wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not really sure what the purpose of this service is. ... I myself wouldn't pay to use Facebook minus the ads. You answered your own question above, and also identified why app.net won't interest you. If you're okay with ads, then I think you'd get zero utility from app.net

I appreciate the response, but that doesn't really answer the question of what the service provides that Facebook or Twitter doesn't. Are ads in and of themselves really a huge problem? I don't find myself often annoyed by them. Now if there were a systemic change to the service because you didn't have to alter the experience for users to generate ad revenue, then I begin to understand. However if this is the idea, t…

It's more fundamentally about this: Do you want to be the product (facebook, twitter) or the customer (app.net)?

A lot of people don't want to be the product and believe when a company focuses on them as a customer rather than them as eyeballs to be sold to advertisers, who are the customer, then a better service is the outcome for the users of the service.

With app.net the user is the customer. With Facebook and Twitter, the user is the product. With App.Net user interests and service provider interests are aligned. The provider wants the service to be better for the users.

With Facebook and Twitter and other ad supported products the users who value their privacy have intentions which are constantly at odds with the service provider whose intention is to continually open up details about the individuals so that those details can be used to improve ad success rates and profitability.

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