Greetings from way out here in Userland! Out here, there is no way that people are going to pay to be "social" online. Just FYI.
Internet and power are not free.
Once you've paid for Internet and power, being 'social online' is indeed free.
App.net funded with $500,000.
181–190 of 211 posts
Re: App.net funded with $500,000.
#182I feel like being "that guy", and saying that this is going to fail. It's not going to gain traction, and will not be profitable or popular in the future.
The reason I want to be "that guy", is that me, Murphy, and his law... have a little thing going. I develop, but definitely don't use social applications (I find them distracting and mundane). I think the concept of a completely open and distributed system like dj2stein9 mentioned is what really needs to be implemented in order to leap frog this idea, and others out there, that might be trying to come up with alternatives to the current players. However, I can definitely see this gaining traction. I love the concept of an Ad free network as well as a nice API.
Dalton and friends. I hope you're extremely successful with this endeavour, and, that you can all comment on this comment in the future with a big "I told you so".
Re: App.net funded with $500,000.
#183There's something really inspiring about the way Dalton Caldwell speaks in the video. His demeanor shows an air of confidence, but it also shows how pissed off he is with the existing ad supported free model. Here's wishing the very best for app.net's success.
Re: App.net funded with $500,000.
#184I feel like being "that guy", and saying that this is going to fail. It's not going to gain traction, and will not be profitable or popular in the future. The reason I want to be "that guy", is that me, Murphy, and his law... have a little thing going. I develop, but definitely don't use social applications (I find them distracting and mundane). I think the concept of a completely open and distributed system like dj2…
"I feel like being "that guy", and saying that this is going to fail. It's not going to gain traction, and will not be profitable or popular in the future."
...
"However, I can definitely see this gaining traction."
eh?
Re: App.net funded with $500,000.
#185The 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…
I think how you concive it now is about spam free twitter or fb and thats what everybody is talking about. I dont think thats the real story. Imagine what you could do with real time syndication infrastructure with privacy and ownership controls built in. BP monitors, blood glucose monitors, runkeeper data, music listening streams, all kinds of data streams and a robust community of app builders to build all kinds of…
still unclear to me why i would/should pay to publish my runkeeper data into the ether or why i would pay to consume yours...will every user of app.net pay for the service? or is it only some subset who opt-in as donors? if the later, doesn't this create a free-rider problem? also, in that case you wind up with a small minority of donor users who are the customers and who set the agenda, not the majority user base, right? ...if the former, how can this become a mainstream consumer product? normal people don't care about any of these 'problems' and why will they pay for something facebook/twitter gives them in exchange for 'viewing' ads they've learned to ignore?
Re: App.net funded with $500,000.
#186I feel like being "that guy", and saying that this is going to fail. It's not going to gain traction, and will not be profitable or popular in the future. The reason I want to be "that guy", is that me, Murphy, and his law... have a little thing going. I develop, but definitely don't use social applications (I find them distracting and mundane). I think the concept of a completely open and distributed system like dj2…
"I feel like being "that guy", and saying that this is going to fail. It's not going to gain traction, and will not be profitable or popular in the future." ... "However, I can definitely see this gaining traction." eh?
I think his point is that he would love to be the naysayer, play devil's advocate, but in this case believes the product will survive despite a tendency to view social networks cynically.
Re: App.net funded with $500,000.
#187Am I alone in thinking the ramp up in funding was a bit sketchy over the past three days? Did Dalton or a VC self-fund this to appear like it was gaining traction? I'm sure Gruber's post had an effect, but something seems off. I don't think the reason for hosting their own "Kickstarter-like campaign" was to save themselves the 5% cut. By controlling the funding, they are only accountable to themselves and control all…
I had the same thought, but that's not the case: https://alpha.app.net/dalton/post/32618
Re: App.net funded with $500,000.
#188The 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…
I think the model could be verticalized and spun out as a semi-silo'd location for enthusiasts of [topic]
Re: App.net funded with $500,000.
#189Earlier quoted context omitted.
In general there are 3 solutions involving 'moderation': 1) self moderation: Google Plus has circles which you can theoretically use to share specific topics only with circles that you know to be passionate about them. Requires manual work to setup the right circles and people rarely do it. 2) manual moderation: Hacker News uses pg's time and some admin/moderator supervision to trim unwanted topics. Requires manual w…
"share specific topics only with circles that you know to be passionate about them" Sounds wrong, doesn't it? The circles sharing model is backwards-- why should I have to make guesses about what other people are interested about? I've written about this on a previous App.net HN thread ( http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4304061 , core excerpt = "I want to subscribe to that person on a "coding" stream, and leave th…
I don't need multiple stdouts, necessarily. I do need 2&>1 for the social web.
Re: App.net funded with $500,000.
#190Earlier quoted context omitted.
To expand on simondlr's point, Twitter will optimize the site for maximum exposure of ads, not user's status updates. The highest paying ads will surface to the top over the highest quality status updates.
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?
Yes. Yes it did. I would easily pay $50 annually if I could get pure c.2010 Google with all the Boolean operators and none of the social bullshit. I deliberately stopped clicking on anything ad-related as soon as they screwed everything up after G+ launched (and stepped up my AdBlock+ filters), so I think they'd make more off of me by selling pure 'premium' search or something.