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A Fee-Based Twitter Is No More Ideologically Pure Than An Ad-Supported Twitter

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Re: A Fee-Based Twitter Is No More Ideologically Pure Than An Ad-Supported Twitter

#21

Post by vannevar »

lowkey wrote: post #4

Fee-based Twitter vs. Ad-Supported Twitter is a false dichotomy. This smells like a PR stunt. How about an open-source Twitter-like service that can run on your own server and federate with others? http://www.Status.net has offered this for several years now and they have done an outstanding job of creating a free and open alternative for status-feed based communication.

Twitter's functionality is basically email+listserv. I've often wondered why the big email players (Google in particular) didn't field a competing service simply built on top of email. You could still use your email account as usual, but using a special client you could use the same account as a Twitter clone.

Re: A Fee-Based Twitter Is No More Ideologically Pure Than An Ad-Supported Twitter

#22

Post by aggronn »

badclient wrote: post #11
ghshephard wrote: post #5

The element that techdirt overlooks, and that I think they did their community (and themselves) a disservice by not mentioning, is the privacy element. Because selling your personal details is a (relatively) invisible intrusion (unless the provider really screws up, ala Beacon) - there is a significant cost to the user (that cares about privacy) that is not visible to them. App.net is aligned only with the users from…

Have app.net people clarified if they would be okay if the service only had 10,000 users at its stabilization point? I know you'd be okay with it but so far, we don't have much from them stating the same. The default of course is that a service that peeks at 10,000 users is headed to dead pool. This is a bit different with 10K paid users but that is still not much in terms of providing financial security to the compa…

> if two years from now your service has 10,000 paid subscribers AND you know that that is the peak, will you be content running the company?

This is entirely dependent on opportunity cost--ie, whats their take-home pay, and whats the real commitment?

Re: A Fee-Based Twitter Is No More Ideologically Pure Than An Ad-Supported Twitter

#23

Post by aggronn »

chimi wrote: post #20
wmf wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As the site says, the $50 is pre-paying for an account.

Am I reading it incorrectly? It says, "You'll be committing to prepaying for a full year of 'member-level' service." That doesn't sound like, "You get a year of service."

Its assumed that thats what it means. I think a lot of people would be asking for a refund if we were wrong though.

Re: A Fee-Based Twitter Is No More Ideologically Pure Than An Ad-Supported Twitter

#24

Post by thinkingisfun »

j45 wrote: post #17

Nothing is ever free. Either we are buying a product, or we are the product. In the real world, things cost money for businesses to stay open and sustainable. I'll say it again, in a free system, we are the product that's sold to advertisers. If I had to pick one, I'd like to be able to pay for such an experience. It's preference and I look forward to seeing how it goes.

Oh, but there's several shades of grey. Take running friendica or diaspora on your own webspace, for example. You're a customer to your webhost, but the software is free. Well, it does have the cost of being kinda slow or hard to set up respectively, but still.. there are public pods you can use and donate to, and where the product is mostly the warm fuzzy feeling people get from doing the right thing. I think you are underestimating human generosity and inventiveness.. shop around!

Re: A Fee-Based Twitter Is No More Ideologically Pure Than An Ad-Supported Twitter

#26

Post by jamiecurle »

chimi wrote: post #13

Why don't people who donated to app.net at least get an account to use the service? They paid $50 and they don't even get an account? In a way, by paying $50 or more, they are committing themselves to pay an unknown, perhaps greater amount to actually use app.net. $50 is a lot of money. Why don't funders get an account?

They do. If you've donated you just have to ask for access to the alpha.

They're pretty snappy at responding too. They took less than five hours to activate me on Sunday.

Re: A Fee-Based Twitter Is No More Ideologically Pure Than An Ad-Supported Twitter

#27

Post by mibbitier »

eykanal wrote: post #14

Following the model from the article: In the fee-based model, the needs of the following must be met: (1) the company, (2) the users. In the ads-based model, the needs of the following must be met: (1) the company, (2) the advertisers, (3) the users. By removing the advertisers from the equation, a lot of resources are freed up to address the needs of the other two parties. It's kind of strange to say that "the compa…

You're assuming that advertisers never meet users needs.

If I'm selling you a bike, and I also tell you about a good deal on bike insurance you can get, then I'm advertising at you. Maybe I get a cut of the insurance premium. BUT, I'm also adding value for the customer. It's a mutually beneficial transaction.

I know it's blasphemy to claim that advertising is sometimes pretty damn useful around these parts, but the fact is, it is useful for users just as much as it's useful for companies in search of revenue.

edit: Has no one here ever clicked on a sponsored result in google? If not, bear in mind you're the exception rather than the rule.

Re: A Fee-Based Twitter Is No More Ideologically Pure Than An Ad-Supported Twitter

#28

Post by majormajor »

ghshephard wrote: post #5

The element that techdirt overlooks, and that I think they did their community (and themselves) a disservice by not mentioning, is the privacy element. Because selling your personal details is a (relatively) invisible intrusion (unless the provider really screws up, ala Beacon) - there is a significant cost to the user (that cares about privacy) that is not visible to them. App.net is aligned only with the users from…

"There is _no_ incentive for them to resell their user's private information."

The incentive is whatever someone else would pay for it. That may not be worth much currently compared to getting to claim to be above all that, but is your information permanently safe there? Do you trust that App.net will always be managed by the same people in the same way? I haven't seen this addressed much by proponents of the "be the customer, not the product" mantra. It would be very easy for someone to be both a customer and a product.

Re: A Fee-Based Twitter Is No More Ideologically Pure Than An Ad-Supported Twitter

#29

Post by thinkingisfun »

laconian wrote: post #8

I don't know why this is so hard or requires such significant investment up front. How is making a decentralized Twitter service more of a challenge than, say, IRC or Jabber? I know that the problems aren't exactly the same, but I would hazard to guess that they are on the same order of magnitude in terms of implementation difficulty.

Especially since it's already been done: http://friendica.com/

^ And that is hardly the only project, and it could use improvements like everything, but it's one that surprised me when I first heard of it, because it really does a lot and, well, nobody ever mentions it..!

One link of note, not that much there yet but surely something I will watch eagerly: http://www.w3.org/community/fedsocweb/

If you wanna do it right, do it right.

Re: A Fee-Based Twitter Is No More Ideologically Pure Than An Ad-Supported Twitter

#30

Post by ghshephard »

badclient wrote: post #11
ghshephard wrote: post #5

The element that techdirt overlooks, and that I think they did their community (and themselves) a disservice by not mentioning, is the privacy element. Because selling your personal details is a (relatively) invisible intrusion (unless the provider really screws up, ala Beacon) - there is a significant cost to the user (that cares about privacy) that is not visible to them. App.net is aligned only with the users from…

Have app.net people clarified if they would be okay if the service only had 10,000 users at its stabilization point? I know you'd be okay with it but so far, we don't have much from them stating the same. The default of course is that a service that peeks at 10,000 users is headed to dead pool. This is a bit different with 10K paid users but that is still not much in terms of providing financial security to the compa…

I'm actually okay with twitter only having 12 users (plus me) - just as long as they are the correct 12 users. So far, 5 of the 12 have committed to using App.net.

I'm a relic though - I make a lot of use of skype-chat/AIM/SMS/iMessaging for my DMing - very little goes through @messages on twitter. For those who do all their messaging on twitter, broad uptake might be more important.

I'm hoping that App.Net establishes an equilibrium somewhat similar to to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_WELL - in which a dedicated paying community of 5,000 to 10,000 is more than enough for viability - particularly as I think this 5-10K users will be among the most interesting on the internet, and will almost certainly avoid the "September Problem."

Regardless - it's something new, with a working Alpha, with an API, and an interesting group of people, lead by someone with a track record of Getting Things Done. The next year, at the very least will be interesting.

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