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The Great App.net Mistake

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Re: The Great App.net Mistake

#51

Post by neuroscr »

otl1248 wrote: post #49
itafroma wrote: post #20

Mat Honan deserves credit for one of the clearest, most concise descriptions of what App.net is (or intends to be): > Imagine this. You sign up for Vine, and build up a robust friend network and library of videos. But then you try out Instagram’s new video sharing, and decide you like its editing features a lot better. > Normally, this would mean starting over, with no friends and no files. But let’s say that both of…

Except even this doesn't make sense. Presumably Vine handles the videos on its own backend, and you only get your social graph when you move over to Instagram. Unless you're going to provide free infrastructure for every component (not just the social graph) there will be an element of lock-in to virtually any social product.

App.net's API does providing more than a microblogging API. They have a file hosting (each user has their own quota), permissive messaging (point to point or group), and a search API so you can easily find anything on their system. They're planning to add more useful APIs, such as billing.

Re: The Great App.net Mistake

#52

Post by neuroscr »

Lifebot wrote: post #29
itafroma wrote: post #20

Mat Honan deserves credit for one of the clearest, most concise descriptions of what App.net is (or intends to be): > Imagine this. You sign up for Vine, and build up a robust friend network and library of videos. But then you try out Instagram’s new video sharing, and decide you like its editing features a lot better. > Normally, this would mean starting over, with no friends and no files. But let’s say that both of…

In an ideal world services would give you YOUR data, instead of locking you in, allowing you to easily export all your data -- ideally in an open format -- that could be imported to other services.

App.net does provide an account export. But more important they've embraced open standards, see: http://blog.app.net/2013/08/07/response-to-brennan-novak-par...

This type of interoperability combined with sections of their API that are public (tokenless) provide a way to consume App.net content without needing an account unless you want to participate.

Then there are 3rd party apps and additions that bring even more open interoperability.

For development, there is Dev-Lite, so if you want to play around with the API, you don't need to spend $100/year until you're ready to join their Developer Incentive Program. And most Developers that have built anything for app.net have made their $100/year investment.

And App.net's annotation are another great example of creating new open standard of interoperability. These attachments can be added to any App.net API primitive to provide additional structured data to enhance interoperability between developer applications. Here's a link to their document repository for this: https://github.com/appdotnet/object-metadata

Re: The Great App.net Mistake

#53

Post by neuroscr »

dangero wrote: post #25

I'll give App.net one thing: They get more press on HN than any other irrelevant company in the world.

Well, I think they captured some imaginations, to the point where they were told it's impossible. So it's an interesting experiment. Especially since they've been success and on-target to deliver most of their promises so far.

It's a huge risk, that not many investors would take. The financial returns are questionable, but what it could do for the Internet as a platform is disrupt the current mega social providers and IMHO I think that's worth trying.

Re: The Great App.net Mistake

#54

Post by otl1248 »

neuroscr wrote: post #51
otl1248 wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except even this doesn't make sense. Presumably Vine handles the videos on its own backend, and you only get your social graph when you move over to Instagram. Unless you're going to provide free infrastructure for every component (not just the social graph) there will be an element of lock-in to virtually any social product.

App.net's API does providing more than a microblogging API. They have a file hosting (each user has their own quota), permissive messaging (point to point or group), and a search API so you can easily find anything on their system. They're planning to add more useful APIs, such as billing.

Seems like bad business strategy to build on top of those if it means it's easy to steal away your userbase. Sounds fine for mid-size apps who can't justify rolling their own though.

Re: The Great App.net Mistake

#55

Post by neuroscr »

Camillo wrote: post #37

If people don't want their social network to be at the whims of a company, why not go all the way and adopt the Tent protocol? http://tent.io I mean, I can see why from a developer's point of view. Those $30k a month are enticing. But why would users care?

Users care because it's easier to pay $5/mo, than to set up and maintain your own infrastructure. Especially if you don't have any experience with servers (Think Grandma, Mom, Dad, non-techies etc).

Re: The Great App.net Mistake

#56

Post by terhechte »

mbesto wrote: post #24
itafroma wrote: post #20

Mat Honan deserves credit for one of the clearest, most concise descriptions of what App.net is (or intends to be): > Imagine this. You sign up for Vine, and build up a robust friend network and library of videos. But then you try out Instagram’s new video sharing, and decide you like its editing features a lot better. > Normally, this would mean starting over, with no friends and no files. But let’s say that both of…

Huh? I'm actually more confused. Doesn't Facebook-connect (and FB apps in general) effectively give you the ability to buy/rent their network effect already? Thus eliminating the "no friends and no files" notion?

Facebook is picky about which app is allowed to use your data. Twitter, for example, is not allowed to use it anymore. So when you develop an app, just relying on facebook could lead to a situation where you suddenly don't have access to your friends anymore (from within that app). Most apps also have their own user databases and just use facebook data for import. With app.net that's the one point where your user data would be saved.

Re: The Great App.net Mistake

#57

Post by neuroscr »

wmf wrote: post #43
Camillo wrote: post #37

If people don't want their social network to be at the whims of a company, why not go all the way and adopt the Tent protocol? http://tent.io I mean, I can see why from a developer's point of view. Those $30k a month are enticing. But why would users care?

Devil's advocate: Maybe that $30K can pay for good UX which users definitely care about.

Funny you should mention that. I feel that crowd-sourcing user interface development by given an open access to an API will lead to new experiments with UI/UX.

I believe when Twitter was more open, we saw an explosion of clients and UI/UX. A couple of these innovations we hadn't easily seen before.

One of the hopes is that the App.net platform continues this experiment.

Re: The Great App.net Mistake

#58

Post by terhechte »

spullara wrote: post #34
dasil003 wrote: post #32

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because you can have your own backend that does anything you want, and just uses App.net for the social graph.

At that point wouldn't you be better off using a bigger social graph?

Not if you want to leverage an already existing social graph, so that people have to sign up for one service less.

Re: The Great App.net Mistake

#59

Post by neuroscr »

mmuro wrote: post #2

In other words, normal people that use Twitter or Instagram still have no clue what App.net is and the early adopters of App.net will eventually get tired of it.

Early adopters aren't tired yet because App.net's continually releasing interesting updates to the platform. And there's even a great example of 3rd party developers working together on their system to extend and support one 3rd party developer's chat system (patter). So each developer's project help retainer interest as well.

So as long as App.net keeps releasing new APIs and developers stay interested in the platform. I don't think early adopters will get tired.

Re: The Great App.net Mistake

#60

Post by neuroscr »

zalew wrote: post #5
TruthSHIFT wrote: post #4

I read the whole article and never discovered the mistake. Did I miss something? It sounds like app.net is doing fine.

"Alpha was the first product out of the gate, launched in reaction to something Twitter did. Subsequently, much development was in building Twitter-like things. So its little wonder that people associate App.net with, well, Twitter. And once people form an idea of what a product is, it becomes very hard to change that idea. "

It was a big mistake. Clinging on to the twitter model gave them something tangible to model after and improve on but the result of that is the API is largely for micro-blogging. They have some file storage now but the primitives for a broad web application building platform aren't there yet. So from reading the API from a developers point of view, it's obvious that it's for micro-blogging. It takes a lot of imagination and effort to repurpose their API into something new.
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