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App.net is shutting down

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Re: App.net is shutting down

#61

Post by mst »

dalton wrote: post #17
ChuckMcM wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My sentiment exactly. And I agree with Dalton it was worth trying to see if it could fly. It raises a lot of interesting questions about the sustainability of the "app economy" for me.

I appreciate both of your sentiments, thank you. I continue to be at least somewhat optimistic that non ad-supported models are worth trying. It seems like Patreon is doing really well and is perhaps something we can all learn from.

I paid into the very beginning. It was never useful to me. I don't regret spending the money to see if it could work.

For me, the lack of apps/integrations made it essentially impossible for me to get the people I wanted to talk to on there on to there.

But I'm really glad you tried, I'm even more glad you've documented what did and didn't work, and I definitely got value for money.

Good luck with whatever's next.

Re: App.net is shutting down

#63

Post by astrodust »

Analemma_ wrote: post #33
astrodust wrote: post #29

This reeked of being dead the day it launched, so it's hardly surpising, but it's also tragic. Why is it so hard to create a Twitter alternative that's popular and effective? Does the world tend to gravitate towards single standards for these things, like Facebook, HTTP or email?

Network effects, and the existing services being "good enough"

It's rare to see a service as entrenched as Twitter get displaced unless it's just not Good Enough in some capacity.

It's possible that if Twitter crumples under the weight of the abuse, if it becomes nothing but a dead sea of trolls, that we'll see a successful replacement.

Until then, muddle on!

Re: App.net is shutting down

#64

Post by nickbauman »

fraserharris wrote: post #59
milesf wrote: post #54

So to recap, Twitter exploded onto the scene in 2007, the "fail whale" appeared a lot, developers made all sorts of wonderful programs hooked into Twitter, the fail whale disappeared, Twitter started to destroy the app ecosystem, App.net launched to great fanfare in response to Twitter's knuckleheaded anti-developer stance, Britney Spears and Justin Bieber arrived and knocked all the nerds out of the top spots on Twi…

Twitter finances (TTM): revenue: $2.52B gross profit: $1.49B It's only losing money because of stock grants.

Which is a lesson in how VC can easily destroy a viable, profitable business with a "money-chasing-money" strategy.

Re: App.net is shutting down

#66

Post by riffic »

unimpressive wrote: post #25
TazeTSchnitzel wrote: post #20

This seems like a good juncture to point out that GNU Social, OStatus, and the Fediverse still exist. It still has some believers. Someone wrote a new implementation in Ruby called Mastodon recently, which has a nice interface.

Do you know of a good tutorial on how to quickly get set up on one of these? I would gladly join but have never really been able to figure out how . (I'm looking to self host.)

For GNU Social, set up a ServerPilot stack on Ubuntu (it's a PHP/MySQL app and the ServerPilot stack works a-okay for this).

For Mastodon, deploy their Docker image?

Re: App.net is shutting down

#68

Post by nl »

nickbauman wrote: post #64
fraserharris wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Twitter finances (TTM): revenue: $2.52B gross profit: $1.49B It's only losing money because of stock grants.

Which is a lesson in how VC can easily destroy a viable, profitable business with a "money-chasing-money" strategy.

How do you figure that?

1) VCs own hardly any shared of Twitter[1]

2) Stock grants are used as compensation for people working at Twitter, NOT something that benefits investors (except in the sense people are working at the company the investors invested in I guess).

It's easy to blame VCs for everything, but I don't see how this makes any sense at all in this case.

[1] http://www.recode.net/2016/8/11/12417064/twitter-stock-owner...

Re: App.net is shutting down

#69

Post by jamon51 »

astrodust wrote: post #29

This reeked of being dead the day it launched, so it's hardly surpising, but it's also tragic. Why is it so hard to create a Twitter alternative that's popular and effective? Does the world tend to gravitate towards single standards for these things, like Facebook, HTTP or email?

This is one of the big problems App.net always had, in that it wasn't at all intended to be a "Twitter alternative". Alpha was supposed to be an example of what could be built on the platform, not the entire product itself.

Re: App.net is shutting down

#70

Post by arielm »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #14
nicholasjbs wrote: post #7

This is a refreshingly honest shutdown notice. Congratulations to Dalton and co for trying something hard and worthwhile, and wrapping it up responsibly when it didn't pan out.

My sentiment exactly. And I agree with Dalton it was worth trying to see if it could fly. It raises a lot of interesting questions about the sustainability of the "app economy" for me.

I'd be very curious to hear the kind of questions this raises about the app economy. Do you mean mobile apps? All software?

App.net was neither. It tried to be a platform for too many things for not enough people. So I can't see how its failure reflects on the economy and not just a bad idea.

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