Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

First Month on app.net – Charts and Stats

diegobasch.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

11–20 of 28 posts

Re: First Month on app.net – Charts and Stats

#11

Post by diego »

shell0x wrote: post #6

I don't get the point on app.net. They seem to be an alternative to twitter, just without ads and user funded. Ok, so far, but why should a developer trust their plattform more than any other one? App.net isn't open source like status.net/identi.ca, so if they close developers will be still screwed. I don't see any reason why I should pay money to finance a closed source plattform, sorry. Also the most people are on…

Why do you need to trust them? It's a commercial relationship like any other. I don't even think about the issue of trust.

For me it's very simple: I pay to have fun with the service. I've spent more time playing with app.net in the past month than I spent watching Netflix in the past year. How many people like me are out there? Who knows, that's the X million dollar question.

To your second point, Twitter is not Facebook. You cannot replace Facebook easily because you'd have to convince your friends and family to go elsewhere. On Twitter I follow a bunch of interesting people who tweet news, links, thoughts. I don't need the same people to be at app.net. As long as there are 100-200 interesting and active people for me to follow / interact with, that's good enough.

Re: First Month on app.net – Charts and Stats

#13

Post by jmathai »

diego wrote: post #11
shell0x wrote: post #6

I don't get the point on app.net. They seem to be an alternative to twitter, just without ads and user funded. Ok, so far, but why should a developer trust their plattform more than any other one? App.net isn't open source like status.net/identi.ca, so if they close developers will be still screwed. I don't see any reason why I should pay money to finance a closed source plattform, sorry. Also the most people are on…

Why do you need to trust them? It's a commercial relationship like any other. I don't even think about the issue of trust. For me it's very simple: I pay to have fun with the service. I've spent more time playing with app.net in the past month than I spent watching Netflix in the past year. How many people like me are out there? Who knows, that's the X million dollar question. To your second point, Twitter is not Fac…

Their ethos is trust. From their site:

> Our most valuable asset is your trust.

That's always been my issue with app.net. I don't think they're positioning themselves to deliver on their own brand promise. It's an entirely separate issue than if they'll be successful and how much value their users derive.

But that really has me wonder...what the hell?

Re: First Month on app.net – Charts and Stats

#14

Post by diego »

Tichy wrote: post #12

Is it possible to read app.net posts without being a member? Is there a firehose of tweets? If people need to pay to read tweets it would be really counterproductive...

Yes, for example:

https://alpha.app.net/global/

I don't think you can read the posts programmatically (including metadata) unless you pay for developer access to the api.

Re: First Month on app.net – Charts and Stats

#15

Post by Tichy »

diego wrote: post #14
Tichy wrote: post #12

Is it possible to read app.net posts without being a member? Is there a firehose of tweets? If people need to pay to read tweets it would be really counterproductive...

Yes, for example: https://alpha.app.net/global/ I don't think you can read the posts programmatically (including metadata) unless you pay for developer access to the api.

Thanks! It reminds me of Twitter a lot, somehow :-)

Re: First Month on app.net – Charts and Stats

#16

Post by MatthewPhillips »

cyarvin wrote: post #9

I already see spam (with t.co links) on the alpha.app.net page. Surely nuking spam and spammers shouldn't be hard for a paid, centralized service like app.net? Identi.ca also appears to be full of spam. Basically nothing will kill a public space faster or deader. There is a certain set of users who will stick around in a chat room/feed/forum/whatever full of spambots, but it's not a high-quality audience and doesn't…

That's not spam, that's people cross-posting from Twitter.

Re: First Month on app.net – Charts and Stats

#18

Post by terhechte »

jmathai wrote: post #8
smartician wrote: post #2

20k users -- does that mean they've broken the $1 million annual revenue threshold? Nice!

20k paying users as fast as they acquired them is absolutely amazing. TBH I don't see the appeal other than leaving Twitter for something new or niche. Perhaps that's enough? I'm not sure. Part of me says Dalton is on to something. The numbers seem to be evidence of that. Another part of me can't wrap my head around the value proposition. But it exists somehow. If I'm right then the numbers represent people who are s…

I've always found the value proposition to be rather clear. In fact, I was one of the really early ones to back App.net because I liked the idea so much. I think it can be compared to a free gym versus an expensive one. The free gym is nice, because it doesn't cost me anything, so I go there. But since it's free there're all kinds of things that bug me: There're way too many people, I always have to wait till I can use a device, the devices are old and of bad quality, and especially since it's free I don't feel very inclined to really use it. I go there a couple of times, and that's it. Now the expensive gym is top class everywhere, the devices are great, the people I meet there are really interesting, and since I pay a lot per month, I'm also interested in using it as much as possible. Loss aversion makes me actually go there quite often in order to not get a bad conscience (since I paid so much for it). It's the same with app.net I think: All the people there actually care. The quality of discussion is really good, people are friendly, there're tons of interesting things going on, the API is really good and we as developers get a say in how it should be changed. They actually ask and listen for advice to make the best API possible. I've worked (a lot) with the Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram API, and in all these examples, there're always things that suck, and you can't do anything about it. On ADN, there's actually a good chance that it'll be fixed.

A good API, on the other hand, means that there'll be huge innovation on the client front. Not now; right now, most things look like Twitter, and there're many clients which are all a tad basic. But give it some time to evolve. Soon, ADN will have quality discussions, quality clients, and lots of innovative features since it is so open to changes (as opposed to Twitter, who at some point became very opposed to changes).

If you ask me right now, I'd say the big value proposition of ADN is the quality of the discussion, if you ask me in 5 months, I guess I'll answer that it's the fantastic client ecosystem.

EDIT: I thought I should mention that I'm the author of the ADM Mac client #appetizer (http://www.instadesk-app.com/appetizer)

Post reply on HN