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App.net funded with $500,000.

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

#131

Post by jschlesser »

natrius wrote: post #77
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

This sort of service depends on network effects. I suspect that 90+% of Twitter and Facebook users aren't willing to pay $50 to get rid of ads. If even Google is having trouble getting traction with a social networking product, I don't see why anyone is confident that a social network users have to pay for will end up with a large enough user base to be useful.

Disagree about network effects. It helps but its not about social graph monopoly. Its about not needing to chase that goal and the opportunities that open up when that isnt the goal. I will agree that large network effects are good for the effort but not a must and there is a public commitment to support interop and the ingress and egress of info to drive value to the users and support the devs.

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

#132

Post by EwanToo »

dave_sullivan wrote: post #64
dkrich wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

As I understood it, it's largely about aligning user and producer interests. At facebook, they have engineers devoted to pleasing users, and others devoted to pleasing advertisers. It's a difficult line to walk, but it's a legitimate argument that advertisers may win in the end because Facebook is now a public company and must show positive earnings growth and all that. App.net (I think) is proposing that if that lin…

App.net will have a very similar problem - walking the line between developers who want to "Just add feature x, so my killer app that I've not built yet will work", and between users who just want a high quality functional service.

The reality is there's always going to be pressures from different directions, there's nothing special about app.net in that regard.

I wish them well, but I don't expect to be paying for access any time soon.

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

#133

Post by jschlesser »

Any reader of my comments should know im a supporter but not employed or beholden to app.net in any way and my opinions are solely based on my interpretation of publicly available info and informal interactions with people inside the app.net community. The actual apis and rules arent final but dalton has made many public commitments and has a history of doing what he says he will do. The work behind app.net didnt spring up overnight. I assume some vc money is in there somewhere so i wouldnt necessarily go vc bashing either. It looks a lot more like a pivot and if there are vcs involved, good on ya for backing it.

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

#134

Post by mechanical_fish »

anu_gupta wrote: post #28
Leynos wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How many characters does it allow per message? From the screenshots, it looks like 256. Is this correct? Thanks.

Yes, it's 256 chars.

This is quite the subtle design decision: It makes it more difficult to write an elegant version of the obvious App.net -> Twitter bridge.

(Such a thing might be difficult anyway - my casual reading suggests that anything beyond the most basic one-way bridge would be a Twitter TOS violation:

https://dev.twitter.com/terms/api-terms

1. All use of the Twitter API and content, [emphasis mine - ed.] documentation, code, and related materials made available to you on or through Twitter ("Twitter Content") is subject to and must comply with these Rules

5A. Your Client must use the Twitter API as the sole source for features that are substantially similar to functionality offered by Twitter. Some examples include trending topics, who to follow, and suggested user lists.

5E. You may not use Twitter Content or other data collected from end users of your Client to create or maintain a separate status update or social network database or service.

6. You do not have a license to Twitter Content submitted through your Service other than the rights granted in the Rules.

What a legal minefield. So it's probably a good idea to have an obvious guardrail to prevent people from straying too close to the minefield, and this 256-character limit is a cute way to implement the guardrail.)

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

#135

Post by sanderjd »

davidw wrote: post #128
achompas wrote: post #112

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Again, you answered in your first 3 sentences. The propsed absence of advertising on app.net will change how users interact with the service, as well as how the service grows. Twitter and Facebook wants to market to their users. This now influences all of their product decisions! Any changes to the service aim to increase CPM. I won't debate whether that makes FB/Twitter better or worse, but they are fundamentally di…

The question is: what is most valuable to most people? * Having a slightly nicer experience or * Having all their friends and potential friends on the same service For a social service, door number 2 (positive network externalities) would be my guess.

I don't really disagree with you, but you've editorialized door number 1 to make the answer more obvious. Door number 1 is a different experience (because of the points listed in the post you replied to), which may be any of "slightly nicer", "slightly less nice", "way nicer", or ????. The point is that it will be different, whether that difference provides more or less value than ad-supported alternatives remains to be seen.

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

#137

Post by taligent »

dannyr wrote: post #96
simondlr wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You didn't read the next sentence. It is not inherently ads that are the problem, it is the fact from a company's perspective you have to cater to a) the advertisers who are paying you money vs b) your users who aren't. Currently, I'm okay in paying $50 to get access to a great community of early adopters (lets admit, it is mostly tech people). I'm not naive to expect it won't change, but once killer apps start poppi…

To expand on simondlr's point, Twitter will optimize the site for maximum exposure of ads, not user's status updates. The highest paying ads will surface to the top over the highest quality status updates.

Sorry but that's crazy.

Twitter is NOT going to compromise the integrity of the entire site for ads. Google haven't. Facebook haven't. Microsoft haven't. And thousands of other sites haven't.

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

#138

Post by davidw »

sanderjd wrote: post #135
davidw wrote: post #128

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The question is: what is most valuable to most people? * Having a slightly nicer experience or * Having all their friends and potential friends on the same service For a social service, door number 2 (positive network externalities) would be my guess.

I don't really disagree with you, but you've editorialized door number 1 to make the answer more obvious. Door number 1 is a different experience (because of the points listed in the post you replied to), which may be any of "slightly nicer", "slightly less nice", "way nicer", or ????. The point is that it will be different , whether that difference provides more or less value than ad-supported alternatives remains t…

The big thing that I can see is "no ads", which would make it slightly nicer. I think we can presume that if it, say, just plain sucks, there's nothing even to discuss! So for the sake of argument it's going to be 'better'. You're right that it could be way better - but Facebook isn't completely blind to its users desires - they could likely copy a lot of what makes it good. Outside of 'no ads', of course. So I wrote 'a bit better', which to me seems the most probable.

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

#139

Post by Jaigus »

The idea of twitter/facebook not appealing to their users enough may be a bit exaggerated. Yes, facebook/twitter must please their advertisers, however they only have those advertisers paying them because they have many users/subscribers. To keep advertisers coming to them, surely they must keep users happy so they can stay and even hope to attract more?

Now I'm sure having to cater to the advertisers certainly affects the decision making(even a bit adversely at times), however their massive following is essentially what makes them valuable.

I also notice that whenever this idea is challenged, I only see people simply parroting his belabored battle-cry of "catering to the users" without actually giving any concrete examples. I'm not against app.net's idea, I just believe the true novelty of this project is creating a micro-twitter(which can also be created on twitter by simply following certain people) for affluent tech people, and _keeping_ it that way via the subscription fee.

Besides that, I haven't read or heard of anything that they plan to do fundamentally different than twitter. Honestly, even if they do, and it actually proves to be a great feature that users love, I don't see why twitter can't simply copy it and perhaps even make it better.

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

#140

Post by jschlesser »

jschlesser wrote: post #117
eoghan wrote: post #110

The reason I think App.net is going to grow is NOT because it doesn't have ads or that the "users are not the product", etc. It's because the community it hosts will be so tightly grouped around a similar, passionate interest: tech startups. Requiring payment, being called "App.net" (they'll be tempted to change this), and being distributed via word of mouth amongst the segregated tech startup community, will prevent…

I think how you concive it now is about spam free twitter or fb and thats what everybody is talking about. I dont think thats the real story. Imagine what you could do with real time syndication infrastructure with privacy and ownership controls built in. BP monitors, blood glucose monitors, runkeeper data, music listening streams, all kinds of data streams and a robust community of app builders to build all kinds of…

Note, got a reply from an insider @orian that this is not off base and how they are thinking too. More social infrastructure and not ad free twitter clone.
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