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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

#101

Post by slurgfest »

loceng wrote: post #95
OoTheNigerian wrote: post #94

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I get the argument you are making and you have restated OP's post in a more respectful manner at least towards the donors. As to App.net being more of a cause than a product, I disagree. App.net's form is formless. That users are projecting their hopes on the API is the idea. The difference is the users (mainly devs) are being empowered to build out those hopes. The Twitter interface is just a use case of a realtime…

The internet's form is formless though, too. The successful part so far of this is a the rallying of the troops, at least a large core group of tech community folk.

Interesting comparison, because the internet (coming out of a governmental and international history) is founded on a documented stack of open standards which have many implementations.

I don't know much about app.net and will happily admit to being wrong about this, but my impression was that they were offering a platform without any of the ingredients for duplicating that platform. In that respect, like Twitter, even if they promise not to cater to the advertising/user data industry.

I guess every company would like to become as indispensable to the internet as TCP/IP. Except that this isn't how it works - it has to be open and easily reproduced in order to become a thing like TCP/IP, which hurts monetization.

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

#102

Post by slurgfest »

guscost wrote: post #54

Boy, a lot of people sure hate this project, don't they?

I don't hate it, but I still don't see much use for it.

Being free of ads is nice. But it seems to me that the hype for this parallels the hype for Twitter, which was mostly viciously circular: you have to be on Twitter because otherwise you'll miss what's happening on Twitter.

Now I am paying $50 to help him build it. I guess that makes sense if you have business ideas for pitching to the people who feel they have to be on Twitter. But I will admit to a little discomfort with how much of the interest is based on projections of everyone else's interest.

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

#103

Post by MatthewPhillips »

vandershraaf wrote: post #100
MatthewPhillips wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Yup, they don't have to be big. Then what's the point of developers to develop on top of app.net API while their user base is small? Less revenue, more "freedom" to develop?

Smaller, but willing to pay.

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

#104

Post by MatthewPhillips »

greghinch wrote: post #52
MatthewPhillips wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

You're right it wouldn't need to grow to the size of Twitter to be successful, but I don't see how it would grow beyond the HN set (and just a subset then). I can't think a single reason anyone would pay for Twitter, when free Twitter already exists. The only pain point App.net really covers is for 3rd party devs who want to quit their day jobs to sell Twitter iPhone apps but can't any more.

You're ignoring the possibility that it will be different from / better than Twitter.

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

#106

Post by newobj »

charliesome wrote: post #96
newobj wrote: post #28

Not saying this applies to app.net (because I refuse to pay attention to the story), but I'd like to coin a phrase that I imagine may become popular soon: "'strap and dump". There, claim staken.

Sounds similar to: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pump_and_dump

That was the idea :)

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

#107

Post by recursive »

slurgfest wrote: post #102
guscost wrote: post #54

Boy, a lot of people sure hate this project, don't they?

I don't hate it, but I still don't see much use for it. Being free of ads is nice. But it seems to me that the hype for this parallels the hype for Twitter, which was mostly viciously circular: you have to be on Twitter because otherwise you'll miss what's happening on Twitter. Now I am paying $50 to help him build it. I guess that makes sense if you have business ideas for pitching to the people who feel they have t…

I don't use twitter much, but I've never seen ads on it. Where are people seeing ads?

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

#108

Post by loceng »

slurgfest wrote: post #101
loceng wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The internet's form is formless though, too. The successful part so far of this is a the rallying of the troops, at least a large core group of tech community folk.

Interesting comparison, because the internet (coming out of a governmental and international history) is founded on a documented stack of open standards which have many implementations. I don't know much about app.net and will happily admit to being wrong about this, but my impression was that they were offering a platform without any of the ingredients for duplicating that platform. In that respect, like Twitter, ev…

Indeed. In the end someone has to pay, and/or someone has to make some money to pay. It seems close to a zero-sum game - which is the point of capitalism and innovation, allowing technology to reach 100% of people and/or make the next unit of production equal to $0, and with digital software, it comes pretty damn close to $0 benefit for the next user.
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