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The money part of App.net is a red herring

alexhillman.com

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Re: The money part of App.net is a red herring

#41

Post by pbreit »

philwelch wrote: post #27
larrys wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"yet backed the project himself anyway?" Per the OP: "By the way, I put my $50 in out of pure morbid curiosity of what’s under the hood." I think you can both think something probably isn't going to work or have issues with it and support it as a hedge or out of, as he said, "morbid curiosity". People do this with politics quite frequently.

> People do this with politics quite frequently. Really? Do you have an example? "I didn't really think the war in Iraq would go very well, and I don't really support it; I just wanted to see what would happen."

Probably referring to giving money to candidates who have no chance of winning. Your bad faith example is ridiculous.

Re: The money part of App.net is a red herring

#44

Post by OoTheNigerian »

I personally think that this post does not belong to the top of HN for the mere fact that it says nothing.

Writing a blogpost speculating about the motivations behind App.net, behind people backing it, the result, the lesson about the post speaking of the fear of money, about how app.net will turnout.

Just a bunch of negative speculation bundled together and called a blogpost then to go on to the comments and boast about how charitable you are [1]

At worst, APP.NET is an experiment and people found it worthy to spend $50 on this experiment. NO-ONE knows how this thing can/will turn out.

I am really looking forward to what the outcome of this project/experiment would be. i.e a real-time messaging API with no fear of the rug being pulled under you by the platform owner.

[1] http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4379277

Re: The money part of App.net is a red herring

#45

Post by mechanical_fish »

alexknowshtml wrote: post #26
unimpressive wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

>How do you correlate that with the mostly-functional alpha which already has 90% of what I use twitter for? I don't mean technically. I'm sure Dalton is quite qualified to build anything he commits to. I mean he doesn't know how to build it because he doesn't know what he's building. (Yet.)

I think part of the disappointment people have in twitter stems from the days when TWITTER didn't know what twitter was going to become. It didn't become what they (and Dalton) hoped, so this is an attempt to reboot. Except the rules didn't really change.

I'm not sure I'm interpreting your phrase "the rules" correctly, but if you mean "the conditions that led Twitter to become what it became"… of course those have changed. Twitter was born in a world that didn't already have a Twitter in it.

To argue otherwise is like saying that it made no sense for my parents to have a second child, because they already had one. Aren't two kids, with similar genetics and similar environment, simply redundant?

Obviously not. You can't duplicate the original even if you try. Nor is that the point. The point is to diversify.

I think Twitter is working fine at the moment – whatever ugly shoe they're allegedly about to drop, it hasn't dropped on me yet. But it's still great to try and reinvent Twitter, just as it was great to try and reinvent Perl, even though Perl still works just fine. You end up somewhere different.

Re: The money part of App.net is a red herring

#46

Post by MatthewPhillips »

greghinch wrote: post #43

I still don't get App.net. There's no possible way anyone outside of this tiny dev community will actually pay of a service like Twitter, yet there's no way for it to become actually relevant if it's just another echo chamber for startup hipsters

This is zero-sum thinking. App.net doesn't have to be as big as Twitter to be successful. There are many pay services to compare it to. Metafilter is one.

Re: The money part of App.net is a red herring

#47

Post by larrys »

philwelch wrote: post #27
larrys wrote: post #20

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"yet backed the project himself anyway?" Per the OP: "By the way, I put my $50 in out of pure morbid curiosity of what’s under the hood." I think you can both think something probably isn't going to work or have issues with it and support it as a hedge or out of, as he said, "morbid curiosity". People do this with politics quite frequently.

> People do this with politics quite frequently. Really? Do you have an example? "I didn't really think the war in Iraq would go very well, and I don't really support it; I just wanted to see what would happen."

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB1000142405274870375750457519...

http://www.opensecrets.org/news/2011/06/dueling-donations-lo...

You can find examples here of the same individual supporting people in both parties:

http://www.opensecrets.org/orgs/indivs.php

Re: The money part of App.net is a red herring

#48

Post by diego »

alexknowshtml wrote: post #17
diego wrote: post #5

"By the way, I put my $50 in out of pure morbid curiosity of what’s under the hood. In retrospect, I should’ve donated to a charity." That's a pretty callous way to end a post, Alex. It's not either-or. If you really feel that way, ask for a refund. Donate the money to charity whether you get the refund or not.

I donate regularly to donorschoose.org and organize a blood drive for the Philly tech scene 3-4x a year. I hope you've got a favorite cause, too :)

Well, I'm not the one with second thoughts about my payment to app.net. Still, it's a good chance to mention http://www.nothingbutnets.net/

Re: The money part of App.net is a red herring

#49

Post by alexknowshtml »

OoTheNigerian wrote: post #44

I personally think that this post does not belong to the top of HN for the mere fact that it says nothing. Writing a blogpost speculating about the motivations behind App.net, behind people backing it, the result, the lesson about the post speaking of the fear of money, about how app.net will turnout. Just a bunch of negative speculation bundled together and called a blogpost then to go on to the comments and boast a…

I have an honest question for you because I'm trying to understand this mode of thinking myself: why suddenly "no fear" of the rug being pulled out from under you? How does giving Dalton your money permanently align your interests with his?

Edit: this isn't meant to accuse Dalton of nefarious plans in the least. I just don't understand the causal link.

Re: The money part of App.net is a red herring

#50

Post by alexknowshtml »

mechanical_fish wrote: post #45
alexknowshtml wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think part of the disappointment people have in twitter stems from the days when TWITTER didn't know what twitter was going to become. It didn't become what they (and Dalton) hoped, so this is an attempt to reboot. Except the rules didn't really change.

I'm not sure I'm interpreting your phrase "the rules" correctly, but if you mean "the conditions that led Twitter to become what it became"… of course those have changed. Twitter was born in a world that didn't already have a Twitter in it. To argue otherwise is like saying that it made no sense for my parents to have a second child, because they already had one. Aren't two kids, with similar genetics and similar env…

I'm with you 100% on every point you made, but my original point was that the thesis seems to be "the money comes from the users & developers now", and I don't think that's as dramatic of a shift as its been painted to be.
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