App.net funded with $500,000. • Hacker News Board

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

#141

Post by ceejayoz » Sun, Aug 12, 2012, 9:03 PM UTC

dkrich wrote: post #111

ceejayoz wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Isn't that self-evident? People post to Facebook and Twitter to be heard. Currently, they seem to post on App.net about App.net. That's not sustainable. My first post on Twitter was "trying to figure out WTF Twitter is". I subsequently didn't post for six months. I wouldn't judge the platform on what's posted in the first 30 days of existence. As for sustainability, $500k in revenue is more than Twitter had for yea…

That's not revenue. It's a donation. That's a pretty big difference. I know the counterargument will be that people are paying to use the service. That's like saying people who fund a project on Kickstarter are paying for the product. They aren't. They're paying for the development, which is one-time in nature and a donation.

From the join.app.net page:

> You will be committing to pre-paying a full year of "member" tier service.

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

#142

Post by mcantelon » Sun, Aug 12, 2012, 9:11 PM UTC

joering2 wrote: post #127

mcantelon wrote: post #97

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True. One advantage of a paid social network I haven't heard mentioned is the fact spam likely won't exist as it does on Twitter.

What made you assume that just because app will be subscription-based, there will be large enough portion of that $$ cheddar that will make app less spammy then, for example, Twitter? Spammer pay thousands of dollars for fresh emailing lists, simply because enough uneducated people will get cough in their nets. You think they won't be able to afford $50? Ultimately, its up to Dalton and his executive skills (is he go…

>Spammer pay thousands of dollars for fresh emailing lists, simply because enough uneducated people will get cough in their nets. You think they won't be able to afford $50?

True, that alone might not do it. The $50 paired with a rudimentary reporting system might limit the use of a single account to a small time period in which the ROI wouldn't be worth it.

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

#143

Post by Jaigus » Sun, Aug 12, 2012, 9:11 PM UTC

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 startup 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.

#144

Post by thirdsun » Sun, Aug 12, 2012, 9:15 PM UTC

kmfrk wrote: post #109

citricsquid wrote: post #6

I'm genuinely surprised, I didn't believe it would make it this far. I've backed it and I really hope it delivers, it's going to be very interesting to see how this turns out. I feel sceptical (because the value in Twitter is the people, not the platform) but I was also sceptical that this would ever reach $100,000, let alone $500,000, so clearly any assumptions previously made are wrong.

It's had a big upswing the last few days. Don't know what caused it, but maybe Dalton's blog posts fanned the fire.

Gruber also mentioned it, explaining that it hasn't reached the funding goal yet.

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

#145

Post by dinkumthinkum » Sun, Aug 12, 2012, 9:24 PM UTC

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…

Is this tongue in cheek? I don't think this is what theu are gong for ...

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

#146

Post by waterlesscloud » Sun, Aug 12, 2012, 9:28 PM UTC

natrius wrote: post #107

dannyr wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This indicates that you think Twitter is stupid, and will make their product suck so much that people will stop using it. I don't see any evidence for that. Did the promise of ad revenue make Google destroy its search engine?

I think that this really is going to reveal is that dichotomy between users as product and users as customer is a false one.

It's an interesting alternate perspective that has somehow gained the force of common wisdom without the evidence to support it. On a service like Twitter, the users are both customer and product, as five minutes of objectively clear thought would show.

App.Net make succeed or it may fail, but it won't be because of this issue.

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

#147

Post by karpathy » Sun, Aug 12, 2012, 9:30 PM UTC

eoghan wrote: post #121

natrius wrote: post #116

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see how "Twitter for _______" is a good idea. I can make "Twitter for _______" by following the right people. The idea that Twitter's user base is too broad doesn't make any sense to me.

You can only follow "the right people", but they'll still talk about things you're uninterested in. In addition, you'll also have people following you who have different interests, who will start irrelevant conversations with you. Why does Hacker News exist? And other special interest web forums, Facebook groups, mailing lists? Who do interest groups hold meetups? People with shared interests get MASSIVE value from h…

What's going to prevent people using app.net from talking about things you don't care about? There is nothing that forces you to only talk about tech and related, as far as I can tell. The reason this doesn't happen on HN is because the topics are agreed on and moderated.

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

#148

Post by albedoa » Sun, Aug 12, 2012, 9:30 PM UTC

briandear wrote: post #136

I sue Tweetbot on my iPhone and can't remember ever seeing an ad. This idea that twitter is getting cluttered by advertising is just a myth.

Can you point to someone who is making that claim?

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

#149

Post by vladd » Sun, Aug 12, 2012, 9:49 PM UTC

karpathy wrote: post #147

eoghan wrote: post #121

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can only follow "the right people", but they'll still talk about things you're uninterested in. In addition, you'll also have people following you who have different interests, who will start irrelevant conversations with you. Why does Hacker News exist? And other special interest web forums, Facebook groups, mailing lists? Who do interest groups hold meetups? People with shared interests get MASSIVE value from h…

What's going to prevent people using app.net from talking about things you don't care about? There is nothing that forces you to only talk about tech and related, as far as I can tell. The reason this doesn't happen on HN is because the topics are agreed on and moderated.

In general there are 3 solutions involving 'moderation':

1) self moderation: Google Plus has circles which you can theoretically use to share specific topics only with circles that you know to be passionate about them. Requires manual work to setup the right circles and people rarely do it.

2) manual moderation: Hacker News uses pg's time and some admin/moderator supervision to trim unwanted topics. Requires manual work which expands proportionally with the community's size if no automation is used.

3) automatic moderation: HN's flag system and community moderation (voting, Slashdot karma) seem to work relatively well, but they've been used until now predominantly to "rank" good comments to the top as opposed to "clustering" online communities into "sub-reddits" with focused interest groups.

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

#150

Post by stfu » Sun, Aug 12, 2012, 9:50 PM UTC

graiz wrote: post #86

guscost wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Not sure that's on purpose. The inner DIV is set to 106.08% width. Seems they are 106% funded.

Is there actually any 3rd party ala kickstarter verifying the donations? Or is this number similar to those of political campaigns and their online fundraising self-reporting?