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The Great App.net Mistake
21–30 of 70 posts
Re: The Great App.net Mistake
#22From the beginning I've quietly predicted that if App.net is ever going to succeed, they will eventually end up going with a more traditional business model where they charge developers for the capacity their applications use (in my mind, they would end up resembling Firebase). Dalton will write up some charismatic blog post about why this is the right move, and how it was really part of the plan all along. Some peop…
Then 4 years later, he'll write a blog post on why selling the company to Twitter/Google/Facebook will be the best move. And how burnt out he is, and how he's leaving to pursue "other dreams". And people will congratulate him.
Why does this sound so familiar?
Re: The Great App.net Mistake
#23I get that App.net is supposed about owning your own data, and sure there's a brief mention of PRISM at the top. But why I would want to write an app for it in the era of PRISM? How can I trust this notion of a "private cloud?"
What I'm looking for now is more decentralization and encryption than a walled garden.
Re: The Great App.net Mistake
#24Mat Honan deserves credit for one of the clearest, most concise descriptions of what App.net is (or intends to be): > Imagine this. You sign up for Vine, and build up a robust friend network and library of videos. But then you try out Instagram’s new video sharing, and decide you like its editing features a lot better. > Normally, this would mean starting over, with no friends and no files. But let’s say that both of…
Huh? I'm actually more confused.
Doesn't Facebook-connect (and FB apps in general) effectively give you the ability to buy/rent their network effect already? Thus eliminating the "no friends and no files" notion?
Re: The Great App.net Mistake
#25I'll give App.net one thing:
They get more press on HN than any other irrelevant company in the world.
Re: The Great App.net Mistake
#26I'll give App.net one thing: They get more press on HN than any other irrelevant company in the world.
They have funding. Journalists like free lunches.
Re: The Great App.net Mistake
#27Mat Honan deserves credit for one of the clearest, most concise descriptions of what App.net is (or intends to be): > Imagine this. You sign up for Vine, and build up a robust friend network and library of videos. But then you try out Instagram’s new video sharing, and decide you like its editing features a lot better. > Normally, this would mean starting over, with no friends and no files. But let’s say that both of…
Huh? I'm actually more confused. Doesn't Facebook-connect (and FB apps in general) effectively give you the ability to buy/rent their network effect already? Thus eliminating the "no friends and no files" notion?
Yes, but neither Twitter and Facebook are in the "social provider" business - they're in the ad business. This is why they've had so much friction with their 3rd-party developer ecosystem. Dalton wants App.net to be a social utility - providing ownership of social data to the user for a price. There are no ads, so there's no motivation to screw over developers.
That's the idea, at least.
Re: The Great App.net Mistake
#28Mat Honan deserves credit for one of the clearest, most concise descriptions of what App.net is (or intends to be): > Imagine this. You sign up for Vine, and build up a robust friend network and library of videos. But then you try out Instagram’s new video sharing, and decide you like its editing features a lot better. > Normally, this would mean starting over, with no friends and no files. But let’s say that both of…
Wouldn't those apps just be App.net clients? If you're limited only to what types of media App.net provides, how can you make an innovative app?
Re: The Great App.net Mistake
#29Mat Honan deserves credit for one of the clearest, most concise descriptions of what App.net is (or intends to be): > Imagine this. You sign up for Vine, and build up a robust friend network and library of videos. But then you try out Instagram’s new video sharing, and decide you like its editing features a lot better. > Normally, this would mean starting over, with no friends and no files. But let’s say that both of…
In an ideal world services would give you YOUR data, instead of locking you in, allowing you to easily export all your data -- ideally in an open format -- that could be imported to other services.
Re: The Great App.net Mistake
#30Earlier quoted context omitted.
"Alpha was the first product out of the gate, launched in reaction to something Twitter did. Subsequently, much development was in building Twitter-like things. So its little wonder that people associate App.net with, well, Twitter. And once people form an idea of what a product is, it becomes very hard to change that idea. "
They wanted to build an open, paid version of the Twitter API/ecosystem. But the value of the Twitter API lay in the access to their 100 million+ users, and all the valuable social data generated by those 100 million+ users. No amount of "open infrastructure", no matter how clever can ever replace that. It's like buying 1000 data centers in every country, and building an entire system that can handle a billion concur…
It's not open. It's closed, proprietary and the boys over at Andressen-Horowitz are going to want a return on their investment.