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App.net funded with $500,000.

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

#151

Post by icebraining »

stfu wrote: post #150
graiz wrote: post #86

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not sure that's on purpose. The inner DIV is set to 106.08% width. Seems they are 106% funded.

Is there actually any 3rd party ala kickstarter verifying the donations? Or is this number similar to those of political campaigns and their online fundraising self-reporting?

    We are using Stripe to host/power the billing aspects of join.app.net. 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.
http://daltoncaldwell.com/we-did-it

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

#152

Post by jkbyc »

mgkimsal wrote: post #72
jasonlotito wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Do you want to be the product (facebook, twitter) or the customer (app.net)? So, what explicit rights does the customer have over that which they get with Facebook or Twitter? Do I have voting rights for features? Is the business model solid? I mean, $500,000 is great and all, but that needs to last an entire year all while supporting future development. Sure, they can get new people on board, but what's their plan…

Excellent point. I've been the customer of many services that still either close or get bought out by companies that I didn't want to do business with in the first place. I had no real 'rights' as a customer. Just because I'm not the product via ad views doesn't mean I (as part of a large customer base) don't make an excellent acquisition/takeover target. Will Caldwell sell out for $10 million? Probably not. Might he…

That's one of the reasons why a distributed open-source version of the service might be the best option.

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

#153

Post by runako »

nikunjk wrote: post #12

This is legit. Dalton's model of funding might spur interest in startups to get money from actual users, rather than venture capital

Not to be too snarky, but this is likely much easier for startups that already have funding from Andreesen Horowitz. This campaign was more about gauging interest than getting money.

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

#154

Post by icebraining »

dj2stein9 wrote: post #102
encoderer wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You think it was the technology stack and not just that users and developers were disinterested? As a developer, I never thought once about building an app or integration for Diaspora. That's why App.Net might have a chance -- he's making this about targeting developers. There's a reason Apple has spent millions marketing different 3rd party apps -- and the whole ecosystem via "there's an app for that". There's a rea…

Rails was a horrible technology choice to to build an open decentralized messaging protocol. They were doomed from the start. NodeJS would be a better choice now. Are there really that many developers clamoring to build new apps on yet another closed, for-profit, centralized social network with no users? I sure don't. I'm already done with Twitter and Facebook apps, the centralized model is simply not the way forward…

Can you expand on why you consider Rails to have doomed them, and why NodeJS would be better? I'm not particularly familiar with either technology (besides reading about them here on HN), but it's my understanding that Rails powers some very big websites, like Hulu and Github.

That said, there's already a working Twitter-like distributed network. I hard my own StatusNet node running on my personal server and getting messages from people on Identi.ca, until I realized that I found the idea of the platform interesting, but not the platform itself (nor Twitter, for that matter). The fact that half the accounts were abandoned didn't help either.

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

#155

Post by [deleted] »

eoghan wrote: post #110

The reason I think App.net is going to grow is NOT because it doesn't have ads or that the "users are not the product", etc. It's because the community it hosts will be so tightly grouped around a similar, passionate interest: tech startups. Requiring payment, being called "App.net" (they'll be tempted to change this), and being distributed via word of mouth amongst the segregated tech startup community, will prevent…

[deleted]

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

#156

Post by fufulabs »

achompas wrote: post #112
dkrich wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I appreciate the response, but that doesn't really answer the question of what the service provides that Facebook or Twitter doesn't. Are ads in and of themselves really a huge problem? I don't find myself often annoyed by them. Now if there were a systemic change to the service because you didn't have to alter the experience for users to generate ad revenue, then I begin to understand. However if this is the idea, t…

Again, you answered in your first 3 sentences. The propsed absence of advertising on app.net will change how users interact with the service, as well as how the service grows. Twitter and Facebook wants to market to their users. This now influences all of their product decisions! Any changes to the service aim to increase CPM. I won't debate whether that makes FB/Twitter better or worse, but they are fundamentally di…

I have joined and paid $100 but my biggest concern is they are VC funded which is a more insidious position for someone to pressure them to do something not in line with the current vision. Also, there is a long line of startups that hate advertising at first then acquiesced when the only budget big enough to cover their burn rate are the ones advertisers have. This includes Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr.

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

#157

Post by anu_gupta »

natrius wrote: post #124
anu_gupta wrote: post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter's success is a function of the emergent behaviour of users and applications built off the platform (including, but not limited to 3rd party clients). They're now trying to freeze innovation and homogenise us. That's the real killer, not the ads (although the ads are shit too). Sure, it'll be ok for many people in the future. But it probably won't be the Twitter that I and others want. What's wrong with trying…

There's nothing wrong with trying App.net. Quite the contrary. I just don't understand why this community doesn't seem to be applying its characteristic skepticism to this idea.

There's been plenty of skepticism, especially at the start (IMO). I think the successful funding is at least a signal that there might be something here.

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

#158

Post by taligent »

dannyr wrote: post #90
natrius wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"Do you want to be the product (facebook, twitter) or the customer (app.net)?" Where's the evidence that suggests that millions of people care about this distinction enough to pay for it?

Recent decisions made by Twitter are all about optimizing the site for advertising revenues. I don't think Twitter has any other choice because they chose the free path from the start. I highly doubt Twitter would suddenly switch to a premium/freemium model. While Twitter has empowered revolutions, I think the quality of the community has degraded though. I believe that if people pay for being part of a community, pe…

I really don't get this "quality of the community" has degraded argument. I hear the same about Facebook.

If the quality is degrading it's because of YOUR friends and YOUR choices about who to follow. Other people including myself simply hide posts or unfollow when the SNR becomes too low.

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

#159

Post by sylvinus »

I think the stats will clearly show that it wouldn't have been funded without the Gruber post.

What puzzles me is that the HN crowd seems to be the target audience for whatever it is App.net wants to do but Dalton & friends totally failed to get them interested enough even after so much posts here.

With Gruber they reached a different crowd and got the money, which may prove that they have something interesting on their hands but now they'll have do deal with different expectations from their users, and I'm highly skeptical it will make their strategy clearer.

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

#160

Post by epscylonb »

waterlesscloud wrote: post #146
natrius wrote: post #107

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This indicates that you think Twitter is stupid, and will make their product suck so much that people will stop using it. I don't see any evidence for that. Did the promise of ad revenue make Google destroy its search engine?

I think that this really is going to reveal is that dichotomy between users as product and users as customer is a false one. It's an interesting alternate perspective that has somehow gained the force of common wisdom without the evidence to support it. On a service like Twitter, the users are both customer and product, as five minutes of objectively clear thought would show. App.Net make succeed or it may fail, but…

I agree.

I hate adverts, but I think app.net is unlikely to topple FB or Twitter in the social sector.

Myspace is a warning to Twitter and FB, if you don't look after your users, improve your service and keep them happy then you the advertisers will leave too.

Sure the advertisers are a force that doesn't necessarily align with the users, but this is something the people running the network have to mitigate, because it isn't in their intrests to piss off their users.

That being said, I think advertising is in a bubble, so from that perspective app.net has an advantage.

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