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App.net funded with $500,000.

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

#191

Post by canweriotnow »

taligent wrote: post #137
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.

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.

Google has. Facebook had nothing to compromise. Microsoft... now you're trolling.

As for Twitter... they've done better than most, so far. But at some point, they'll have more pressure to show revenue. And then... how do they make money, again?

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

#192

Post by popmentos »

obilgic wrote: post #48

But Will it scale?

If Groupon would reimplement its account system to adopt App.net, (i.e. paying the annual fee by a ratio of each bill), App.net might scale.

What Groupon get is a new role that introducing customers to companies by letting customers inquire information of services in the long term. Especially, companies who sell massive online education can attract more shoppers through Groupon.

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

#194

Post by lloeki »

natrius wrote: post #93
stock_toaster wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. Does it matter if they don't get hundreds of millions of accounts, as long as the business is sustainable and users enjoy the service?

Users are unlikely to enjoy the service if their messages don't have an audience. After a year is up I bet people will tire of having to use both Twitter and App.net, and stop paying for the latter. How many App.net users have stopped using Twitter? That's an important metric to pay attention to over the next year. I predict it will be near zero, and most people aren't willing to pay in money and inconvenience for an…

> How many App.net users have stopped using Twitter

Even before APp.Net I contemplated leaving Twitter because of the noise, the push towards ads and the general climate toward third-parties. I certainly would not use Twitter without TweetBot.

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

#195

Post by EwanToo »

loceng wrote: post #50
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 could be a lot of curiosity that drove it. Now I can see a problem arising if they take outside investment.

They already have, $5 million from Andreessen Horowitz

http://www.crunchbase.com/company/mixed-media-labs

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

#196

Post by TomAnthony »

ceejayoz wrote: post #141
dkrich wrote: post #111

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

It was unclear to me if the $50 covers that or I'm expected to pay for membership at that point, on top of my donation towards development.

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

#197

Post by melvinram »

jrockway wrote: post #165
unimpressive wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://alpha.app.net/dalton/post/32618 "We are using Stripe, so it's easy to audit." - Dalton Caldwell

I'd like to audit it right now. How can I do so? (The point is: it's not easy to audit. Not that I actually care one way or the other.)

Easy != accessible to everyone.

Easy == it wouldn't take a lot of work for him to allow someone to verify it.

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

#198

Post by chalst »

jrockway wrote: post #165
unimpressive wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

https://alpha.app.net/dalton/post/32618 "We are using Stripe, so it's easy to audit." - Dalton Caldwell

I'd like to audit it right now. How can I do so? (The point is: it's not easy to audit. Not that I actually care one way or the other.)

It's rather unclear what Dalton means here. The interpretation that seems likeliest to me is that Dalton can easily provide independent evidence to a professional auditor (i.e., someone who can be given trusted access to sensitive data, and someone who isn't easily induced to lie on a client's behalf) that the tally is correct.

Unless it becomes routine to actually employ these auditors, that doesn't really answer jtokoph's worry.

Postscript - Indeed, that's what he meant: on http://daltoncaldwell.com/we-did-it he says "In the very near future I will ask an impartial 3rd party take a look at our data (while preserving all privacy of our backers) and publicly verify that the join.app.net was operated in an honest manner."

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

#199

Post by jaredsohn »

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…

> destined to be a noisy mess just like everything else that currently exists

Subjot (http://subjot.com/) would allow you to subscribe to people based on topic, but they shut down recently.

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

#200

Post by 0ptr »

guscost wrote: post #173
Samuel_Michon wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

AFAIK Vimeo calculates only fully watched videos, so it's 30000 viewers who watched the video to the end.
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