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App.net funded with $500,000.

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

#171

Post by walkon »

maxbogue wrote: post #75

While I'm in favor of the concept behind this, I have one deeply concerning question that I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone else ask here: Why is it called App.net? The first 4 or 5 articles I saw about it, I ignored completely because I assumed it was some sort of app (web/mobile/whatever) framework, not a social network. They talk about the users being the customers (versus advertisers), but the name of the servi…

I agree. The chosen name of app.net is simultaneously generic and borderline misleading (I too thought it might be some framework or app development tool). This alone is enough to make me a bit skeptical of app.net's leadership. They might as well call it acloudservice.com and it would have a similarly worthless conveyance of meaning.

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

#172

Post by mhitza »

karpathy wrote: post #169
vladd wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 w…

"share specific topics only with circles that you know to be passionate about them" Sounds wrong, doesn't it? The circles sharing model is backwards-- why should I have to make guesses about what other people are interested about? I've written about this on a previous App.net HN thread ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4304061 , core excerpt = "I want to subscribe to that person on a "coding" stream, and leave th…

I share the same complaint, and I've thought many times to create a service like that but people just don't seem to care that much. Even my G+ stream has started in the last few months to get littered with all the usual personal bullshit photos; the reason I left Facebook & Twitter in the first place.

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

#173

Post by guscost »

Samuel_Michon wrote: post #43
citricsquid wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's an interesting point, if you look at the video statistics it has only had 31,000 plays which means for every 4 people that watch the video at least 1 spends $50. However, Stripe has access to their payment info so it's possible to prove whether or not this is faked. Actually, that's an interesting question: would it be fraud to fake the last $xxx,xxx of a crowd sourcing drive?

I backed the project without watching the video. The posts on sites like DaringFireball and Marco.org had already convinced me. I doubt I'm the only one.

Same here.

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

#174

Post by dj2stein9 »

icebraining wrote: post #154
dj2stein9 wrote: post #102

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Rails was a horrible technology choice to to build an open decentralized messaging protocol. They were doomed from the start. NodeJS would be a better choice now. Are there really that many developers clamoring to build new apps on yet another closed, for-profit, centralized social network with no users? I sure don't. I'm already done with Twitter and Facebook apps, the centralized model is simply not the way forward…

Can you expand on why you consider Rails to have doomed them, and why NodeJS would be better? I'm not particularly familiar with either technology (besides reading about them here on HN), but it's my understanding that Rails powers some very big websites, like Hulu and Github. That said, there's already a working Twitter-like distributed network. I hard my own StatusNet node running on my personal server and getting…

Rails is geared for CRUD apps, not messaging. Whereas NodeJS is built for messaging. Picking the wrong technology stack for what needs to be a messaging protocol that resembles SMTP definitely contributed to Diaspora's lack of adoption, but certainly wasn't the only reason.

StatusNet actually sounds kinda good. Why isn't it more popular? I'm not sure, perhaps people need something more than just a replacement for Twitter. I think something that will eventually become successful will be some sort of multi-use low-level protocol that handles many types of "social communications", for example: Twitter + WordPress + Private IM + Voice Message.

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

#175

Post by bitsoda »

Am I alone in thinking the ramp up in funding was a bit sketchy over the past three days? Did Dalton or a VC self-fund this to appear like it was gaining traction? I'm sure Gruber's post had an effect, but something seems off. I don't think the reason for hosting their own "Kickstarter-like campaign" was to save themselves the 5% cut. By controlling the funding, they are only accountable to themselves and control all visibility.

Note: There's nothing wrong with using your own money to fund your product, but some more transparency would be nice.

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

#177

Post by encoderer »

dj2stein9 wrote: post #102
encoderer wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think it was the technology stack and not just that users and developers were disinterested? As a developer, I never thought once about building an app or integration for Diaspora. That's why App.Net might have a chance -- he's making this about targeting developers. There's a reason Apple has spent millions marketing different 3rd party apps -- and the whole ecosystem via "there's an app for that". There's a rea…

Rails was a horrible technology choice to to build an open decentralized messaging protocol. They were doomed from the start. NodeJS would be a better choice now. Are there really that many developers clamoring to build new apps on yet another closed, for-profit, centralized social network with no users? I sure don't. I'm already done with Twitter and Facebook apps, the centralized model is simply not the way forward…

Maybe you have deep enough experience with Node to avoid the thin ice, but my experience has been one of sparsely-featured and buggy libraries when compared to their counterparts in Python, Java, etc. All languages need time to grow up, but for now we use Node as a pinch-hitter in our stack (I created a Snowflake server with great results)

Honestly, Facebook has a lot of frontend code. I don't think Rails is a bad choice for that. My experience with large systems is that they're usually not homogenous. There's no reason they couldn't implement the Rest API components outside of Ruby if that was their biggest obstacle to success.

Though I'm not sure it is, because even though you've obviously given this issue some thought, you didn't really articulate who was put off by their use of Rails?

Edit: To avoid confusion, Snowflake as in https://github.com/twitter/snowflake, not "snowflake schema".

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

#179

Post by hxf148 »

I've upgraded my account and am going to take a spin at a html5 app. It's an interesting group of people and even if it does not get massive scale it's fun.

Also keep in mind that I don't think app.net wants to be Twitter, it wants to be the back end public messaging system for any and all kinds of apps that have a need for a messaging or notification network.

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

#180

Post by kellishaver »

jschlesser wrote: post #108
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 agree that its not explained well by a paid real time social feed. Im a backer, here is what it is about for me. 1. Platform. Its not about 1 canonical interface or usage. Its real time social information network plumbing. Build your own idea on top of it. In the beginning it will be twitter clones, eventually it will be hooked into all sorts of information generators and consumers in different contexts. 2. Its abo…

> 1. Platform. Its not about 1 canonical interface or usage. Its real time social information network plumbing. Build your own idea on top of it. In the beginning it will be twitter clones, eventually it will be hooked into all sorts of information generators and consumers in different contexts.

This is what got me to back it (at the developer level). I'm just extremely curious and interested in seeing what I can do with the platform. It may start out as a Twitter clone, but I think there's a lot of potential there for the platform to evolve and grow into something more and I'm looking forward to see what I can do with it.

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