App.net funded with $500,000.

https://join.app.net/?fully-funded

by aculver • 14 years ago

364 204 14 years ago

join.app.net

acoyfellow2• 14 years ago

Is this going to inspire more companies / startups to go the crowdfunding route? (I think so). How many companies are going to now cite: "App.net style" of pre-launch efforts? Is this a good or a bad thing?

This is a whole new era, either way. Congrats to the App.net team!

andrewcross2• 14 years ago

I think we'll definitely see a lot of attempts, but I don't know if many will have much success.

It's very similar to Louis C.K.'s online video. While his video was successful, it only worked because he'd already established a name for himself. Other, lesser known, comedians will have a hard time replicating that because they don't have the brand already.

If first-time entrepreneurs try and use crowd-funding, I just don't see catching unless the product is truly awesome (think Pebble).

icebraining6• 14 years ago

That's true for every type of funding, though.

terhechte2• 14 years ago

I've been using the alpha for the past days and it's really refreshing. Interesting discussions, and the API that is shaping up, looks really good. Congratulations and thanks Dalton.

Leynos• 14 years ago

How many characters does it allow per message? From the screenshots, it looks like 256. Is this correct?

Thanks.

anu_gupta6• 14 years ago

Yes, it's 256 chars.

terhechte2• 14 years ago

There've actually been discussion about that. Some even think it's too much, but I guess people will get accustomed to it quickly. The upside, as I found, is that it's possible to write slightly better arguments while still keeping brevity. On Twitter I almost always hit the limit (or very close) on app.net, so far not really.

aculver• 14 years ago

I love this. In years past, Dalton and his team were able to raise millions in funding from a top-tier venture capital firm. But raising $500,000 in revenue from his target customers, that's a whole different ball game! Super excited to see where this goes. Congratulations to Dalton and the whole team!

guscost7• 14 years ago

This is awesome, it even looks like the "funding bar" graphic breaks when it gets to 100%...

Brilliant.

graiz• 14 years ago

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

pdog• 14 years ago

One interesting difference is that the $500,000 comes with nearly 8,000 paying customers. Venture funding doesn't usually come with a few thousand users!

smbwrs• 14 years ago

I was a huge doubter on day one - the initial video and manifesto seemed confusing and too abstract to fly - but seeing Dalton handle intensive negativity (even some from me, I'm a bit ashamed to admit) with such aplomb won me over. Seeing his frequent updates with progress, even before the $500k mark, was a great confidence booster.

Every cent well deserved. I was a supporter, and I look forward to helping build app.net in to something amazing.

acoyfellow2• 14 years ago

This is very much how my experience with App.net has been. I was a non-believer, but seeing how Dalton handled things has turned me into a major fan of his.

citricsquid2• 14 years ago

I'm genuinely surprised, I didn't believe it would make it this far. I've backed it and I really hope it delivers, it's going to be very interesting to see how this turns out. I feel sceptical (because the value in Twitter is the people, not the platform) but I was also sceptical that this would ever reach $100,000, let alone $500,000, so clearly any assumptions previously made are wrong.

loceng4• 14 years ago

It could be a lot of curiosity that drove it.

Now I can see a problem arising if they take outside investment.

EwanToo2• 14 years ago

They already have, $5 million from Andreessen Horowitz

http://www.crunchbase.com/company/mixed-media-labs

kmfrk• 14 years ago

It's had a big upswing the last few days. Don't know what caused it, but maybe Dalton's blog posts fanned the fire.

thirdsun• 14 years ago

Gruber also mentioned it, explaining that it hasn't reached the funding goal yet.

mwilcox• 14 years ago

The launch of an alpha product definitely helped.

jamiecurle• 14 years ago

To have funded something in which users are going to be first class citizens feels remarkably refreshing.

jtokoph• 14 years ago

Not that I'm accusing Dalton of doing this, but when croudfunding without using a platform like kickstarter, it might be too easy to fake backer numbers in order to meet the goal or inflate popularity.

What this means for the future: Companies will announce croudfunding and then fake amazing numbers in order to appear popular and gain lots of press.

I can see the headline now: "ACME Software raises $3 million in first 24 hours!" Actual funds raised: $250.

sdqali6• 14 years ago

A number of people have raised this point to Dalton and he has promised that he will do a third party verification of all funding promises.

For example, see this: https://twitter.com/daltonc/status/234698066245074945 and https://twitter.com/daltonc/status/234399350275571714

EDIT: Added a link to Twitter conversation showing more context.

J-H3• 14 years ago

Dalton also says this on app.net: https://alpha.app.net/dalton/post/32618

unimpressive4• 14 years ago

https://alpha.app.net/dalton/post/32618

"We are using Stripe, so it's easy to audit." - Dalton Caldwell

jrockway• 14 years ago

I'd like to audit it right now. How can I do so?

(The point is: it's not easy to audit. Not that I actually care one way or the other.)

citricsquid2• 14 years ago

It's an interesting point, if you look at the video statistics it has only had 31,000 plays which means for every 4 people that watch the video at least 1 spends $50. However, Stripe has access to their payment info so it's possible to prove whether or not this is faked.

Actually, that's an interesting question: would it be fraud to fake the last $xxx,xxx of a crowd sourcing drive?

Samuel_Michon• 14 years ago

I backed the project without watching the video. The posts on sites like DaringFireball and Marco.org had already convinced me. I doubt I'm the only one.

sdqali6• 14 years ago

See this: http://daltoncaldwell.com/we-did-it

nikunjk• 14 years ago

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

runako• 14 years ago

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.

arunoda3• 14 years ago

This is awesome.

But the real question is how they got funded more than 50% in just 4 days? It's amazing. I hope this is not a manual increase of the counter.

J-H3• 14 years ago

Dalton's covering this: https://alpha.app.net/dalton/post/32618. In a recent blog post, he also talks about how crowdfunding campaigns usually pick up steam in the last 48 hours

sdqali6• 14 years ago

Dalton continuously put out updates for people and I think updates like this(http://daltoncaldwell.com/appnet-is-not-vaporware) would have pushed people who were mildly skeptic to contribute.

rumblestrut• 14 years ago

Most Kickstarter-like campaigns start out strong, dip down, then get a lot of traction right before the close of the project (for the ones that are going to be successful).

jmandzik• 14 years ago

I think a large part of the strong finish is a feedback loop. As it gets closer to achieving the goal, the belief that this concept could take off strengthens, which leads to more signups.

That and the press blitz, of course.

sdqali6• 14 years ago

And celebrity users endorsing it would have helped as well. For example - Robert Scoble, Stephen Fry (https://twitter.com/stephenfry/status/234695539357257728) etc.

arunoda3• 14 years ago

Cool.

Honestly I haven't thought he would manage to raise this amount.

I just checked at on 8 and it was 43%. After that I didn't look into the count. Now, wow I'm impressed. I think this is the best crowdfunding effort I've ever seen.

I'm not a backer of app.net. But would love to hear about the roadmap and future development. Still twitter, FB is OK for me. I'm waiting for what app.net can offer something I wanted.

BTW I'm not a hater :)

Good Luck! App.net team.

gaving2• 14 years ago

...bootstrap? :/

sdqali6• 14 years ago

Are you referring to App.net's use of Twitter bootstrap to build their UI or to the way Dalton funded the execution of this idea?

gaving2• 14 years ago

The former, just hell of a bland way to build things these days (even though it is great). Even if it was skinned or something it would go a long way of making it stick out a bit.

dave_sullivan3• 14 years ago

That's pretty amazing. Clearly app.net is tapping into something that people are starting to feel pretty strongly about--the benefits of "free" aren't necessarily worth the consequences in the longterm.

I could see a similar model of aligning user/company interests rather than advertiser/company interests working for other services--email probably being the biggest that comes to mind.

This is actually a good thing for revenue as even a small membership fee is going to VASTLY outweigh the per user revenue generated from advertising. We'll see if this idea is capable of jumping from internet nerdom to the mainstream, but mainstream users are also becoming more and more aware of the actual cost of 'free' products.

So... congrats app.net team, and good luck!

icebraining6• 14 years ago

Clearly app.net is tapping into something that people are starting to feel pretty strongly about--the benefits of "free" aren't necessarily worth the consequences in the longterm.

Well, maybe. Let's remember that Twitter has more than a hundred million accounts, while App.net has ~7500; we have no evidence that the people feeling that are not just a small number of outliers, much like there always will be.

anu_gupta6• 14 years ago

Yup, it's easy to get caught up in the euphoria of reaching an arbitrary target. Still, I'm hopeful.

dave_sullivan3• 14 years ago

We'll see if this idea is capable of jumping from internet nerdom to the mainstream, but mainstream users are also becoming more and more aware of the actual cost of 'free' products.

I agree. I'm not in the business of predicting the future, but it's worth noting that Twitter did not start with more than a hundred million accounts.

stock_toaster• 14 years ago

  > Well, maybe. Let's remember that Twitter has more than a hundred million accounts, while App.net has ~7500; we have no evidence that the people feeling that are not just a small number of outliers, much like there always will be.

Does it matter if they don't get hundreds of millions of accounts, as long as the business is sustainable and users enjoy the service?

dannyr3• 14 years ago

Quality > Quantity.

shell0x• 14 years ago

I don't want to ask dumb questions and I also read the content on their site, but I'm still not sure if it's just a twitter alternative or more. And what about identica? Isn't it a similar service like app.net?

J-H3• 14 years ago

http://daltoncaldwell.com/an-audacious-proposal.

chris24• 14 years ago

My understanding is that yes, identica and app.net are similar, except for their business models. Identica didn't have a clear business model (AFAIK), so they would likely resort to advertising. App.net is trying to avoid that by charging users directly.

anu_gupta6• 14 years ago

Yes, and yes (hopefully).

It's a twitter alternative that will (hopefully) not treat users as product.

It's also being thought about as a more open developer friendly platform (eg no constraints on clients because the service needs to show adverts).

losvedir• 14 years ago

Cool! I backed it mostly to snag my first name (@gabe) in case it actually does take off, but it's a neat idea, too. Congrats to Dalton and the gang.

dkrich3• 14 years ago

I'm not really sure what the purpose of this service is. Could somebody please explain? I'm not trying to be a dick. I myself wouldn't pay to use Facebook minus the ads. I barely use it as it is. I only pay for things that provide me with some utility. The description of "a paid, real-time social feed" is vague and ambiguous.

achompas2• 14 years ago

I'm not really sure what the purpose of this service is. ... I myself wouldn't pay to use Facebook minus the ads.

You answered your own question above, and also identified why app.net won't interest you. If you're okay with ads, then I think you'd get zero utility from app.net

dkrich3• 14 years ago

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, then in what ways the service would be different is exactly what I'm trying to figure out.

Remember, there are two sides to the coin "we offer a better experience without the ads" method. First of all you are going to get a smaller user base. So how much are you going to charge? $5/month? $10/month? You would need to get a pretty massive user base to be able to pay the overhead and attract top engineering talent, so in the end I'm not sure you'd be a whole lot better off.

tptacek• 14 years ago

Not true. I didn't support App.net and am not optimistic about it, but there is a much larger potential value proposition to App.net than "not seeing ads": App.net promises to allow arbitrary 3rd party clients in a way Twitter won't, because Twitter will suppress 3rd party clients that harm its ad ecosystem.

natrius13• 14 years ago

This sort of service depends on network effects. I suspect that 90+% of Twitter and Facebook users aren't willing to pay $50 to get rid of ads.

If even Google is having trouble getting traction with a social networking product, I don't see why anyone is confident that a social network users have to pay for will end up with a large enough user base to be useful.

rubashov• 14 years ago

As I read your post I realized app.net is probably for me.

It's like lower Manhattan or parts of San Francisco. People who think the rents are ridiculous shouldn't live there anyway; it's not for them.

guscost7• 14 years ago

The community and interactions made possible by this general feed will supposedly create the value. It makes sense to me, information is my entire life and I'd pay $50/year for a network that was even a tiny bit better than Facebook/Twitter.

jschlesser6• 14 years ago

I agree that its not explained well by a paid real time social feed. Im a backer, here is what it is about for me.

1. Platform. Its not about 1 canonical interface or usage. Its real time social information network plumbing. Build your own idea on top of it. In the beginning it will be twitter clones, eventually it will be hooked into all sorts of information generators and consumers in different contexts.

2. Its about incentives. The incentives are for app.net to build the apis to support things twitter of fb never would, due an incentive to drive innovation, not stifle it.

3. Its about users control and choice. Use the interface or apps you want. Control where your information goes and who is mining it.

4. Its about friction. There is friction to blatant abuse via a pay model and there is a lack of friction to develop frictionless sharing with things like instagram.

5. Its about ownership. Your data is yours unless you choose to give it away to others.

6. Its also about alternatives to a single model for success (winner take all ad based strategies). I think its a mistake to think that its only successful with huge network effects. The infrastructure can service uses and apps that export information to other networks as well as in network uses. Its successful if it has paying users that pay for opex and capex and generate some profit.

The counter to this is that its difficult to explain to grandma in omaha until the new apps and usage models get built. If its just a paid twitter, it will fail in its ambitions. If it leads to safe private frictionless sharing in ways that couldnt realistically be contemplated before, its a success. The alpha proof of concept that is in place now is twitterish, no denying, but people are already working on things that just arent possible with facebook and twitter today.

kellishaver• 14 years ago

> 1. Platform. Its not about 1 canonical interface or usage. Its real time social information network plumbing. Build your own idea on top of it. In the beginning it will be twitter clones, eventually it will be hooked into all sorts of information generators and consumers in different contexts.

This is what got me to back it (at the developer level). I'm just extremely curious and interested in seeing what I can do with the platform. It may start out as a Twitter clone, but I think there's a lot of potential there for the platform to evolve and grow into something more and I'm looking forward to see what I can do with it.

dj2stein94• 14 years ago

A centralized social network is what's wrong. Despite their best intentions they're still going to have all their users and developers by the balls. This absolutely will not replace Facebook or Twitter, it'll be just another one of the dozens of copycats like Path.

What really needs to happen is an open decentralized protocol needs to be agreed upon for newsfeeds + blog posts (wordpress) + microblog (twitter). Then everyone can write their own servers and clients and operate in a manner like Email currently works.

unimpressive4• 14 years ago

> What really needs to happen is an open decentralized protocol needs to be agreed upon for newsfeeds + blog posts (wordpress) + microblog (twitter). Then everyone can write their own servers and clients and operate in a manner like Email currently works.

Then do it. Make everyone look like idiots for not doing it sooner. Make it so cool I have to sign up.

loceng4• 14 years ago

I'm guessing people are working on it. It's not an easy problem to solve though.

dj2stein94• 14 years ago

Oh I've definitely been thinking about it. One big problem is it wouldn't be nearly as lucrative as other potential project ideas -- it simply won't be possible to build another $100B Facebook style corporation around a social network. Diaspora was kind of onto the right idea but I think they completely chose the wrong technology stack and are now stuck in the mud without any momentum.

icebraining6• 14 years ago

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/StatusNet

anu_gupta6• 14 years ago

The reason that no one has managed to make a proper decentralised version of Twitter is that it's really, really hard - much harder than saying "what really needs to happen is..."

jemeshsu• 14 years ago

http://ampify.it/

Not sure why the down vote. I'm not associated to the project. Just to highlight an effort of a decentralised social platform.

electic• 14 years ago

I love the idea. I am totally rooting for them but I hate the name. I don't see someone in marketing, either girl or guy, who loves tech but does't know the internals of tech, singing up to this service. It's too narrow in it's focus.

shortformblog• 14 years ago

Credit Stephen Fry for probably at least $10k of that — he told his 4 million followers about the service, which pushed it over the edge: https://twitter.com/stephenfry/status/234695539357257728

Seriously though, this is great. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens next. Hoping to experiment on the journalism front there.

guscost7• 14 years ago

Congrats, dude. Now to scrape together a seriously unexpected $100.

sdqali6• 14 years ago

An update from Dalton that deals with new features and third party verification of the funding - http://daltoncaldwell.com/we-did-it

obilgic• 14 years ago

But Will it scale?

popmentos• 14 years ago

If Groupon would reimplement its account system to adopt App.net, (i.e. paying the annual fee by a ratio of each bill), App.net might scale.

What Groupon get is a new role that introducing customers to companies by letting customers inquire information of services in the long term. Especially, companies who sell massive online education can attract more shoppers through Groupon.

cmod• 14 years ago

1. Awesome to see this funded.

2. Curious to see all the post-funding pile-on. Looks like their subscribers are jumping quite quickly (for a Sunday!) now that funding has been met. Funding validation makes it feel like a safer 'bet' now?

3. Really curious to see if app.net can scale better than Twitter from the start. I'm talking full archives, proper search, robust conversation tracking. If app.net covers these areas sufficiently well, I could see this becoming a go-to feed for journalists / other people for whom proper archives and full-search would be invaluable.

arunoda3• 14 years ago

App.net will reach $1,000,000 mark when they will be funded (AUGUST 13 at 11:59PM PDT.)

whunut• 14 years ago

To be honest, I was skeptical App.net would meet its $500,000 goal on time. Not because I thought it was a bad idea, but because raising that much money from customers just seemed an almost impossible feat.

So congrats, Dalton, can't wait to see what happens next!

katcaverly• 14 years ago

Congratulations to Team App.net and a special shoutout to the Alpha App.netizens who brought da noise, and the passion to the last 10 days.

Now it is up to the developers to show us!!

maxbogue• 14 years ago

While I'm in favor of the concept behind this, I have one deeply concerning question that I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone else ask here:

Why is it called App.net?

The first 4 or 5 articles I saw about it, I ignored completely because I assumed it was some sort of app (web/mobile/whatever) framework, not a social network. They talk about the users being the customers (versus advertisers), but the name of the service is clearly targeting developers, not the users...

mmahemoff• 14 years ago

It was previously a site (from the same owner) for showcasing apps, e.g.: http://app.net/uberhype. I'm not sure what happens to those pages now, presumably they're grandfathered in as "new app.net" accounts.

walkon• 14 years ago

I agree. The chosen name of app.net is simultaneously generic and borderline misleading (I too thought it might be some framework or app development tool). This alone is enough to make me a bit skeptical of app.net's leadership. They might as well call it acloudservice.com and it would have a similarly worthless conveyance of meaning.

eoghan2• 14 years ago

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 so many different types of people from using it. This is all a great thing and I bet there will be opportunities for other "Twitter for ________" ventures. Charging for a service like this that caters to a much smaller market makes it sustainable.

Congrats to Dalton and all involved. This is one of the most interesting and courageous internet projects in recent time.

natrius13• 14 years ago

I don't see how "Twitter for _______" is a good idea. I can make "Twitter for _______" by following the right people. The idea that Twitter's user base is too broad doesn't make any sense to me.

eoghan2• 14 years ago

You can only follow "the right people", but they'll still talk about things you're uninterested in. In addition, you'll also have people following you who have different interests, who will start irrelevant conversations with you.

Why does Hacker News exist? And other special interest web forums, Facebook groups, mailing lists? Who do interest groups hold meetups? People with shared interests get MASSIVE value from highly focused gatherings and conversations. And Twitter right now is anything but focused.

jschlesser6• 14 years ago

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 streaming and where desired sharing. If i dont want to see your spotify listens, i can turn that off, if i dont want you to see my health info but want to share with my doc, that can happen too. Go nuts, imagine the future without having to be forced to cram it into a timeline or public feed mined for ad relevance.

jschlesser6• 14 years ago

Note, got a reply from an insider @orian that this is not off base and how they are thinking too. More social infrastructure and not ad free twitter clone.

localhost3000• 14 years ago

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?

jasondc• 14 years ago

StockTwits is an example of Twitter for Finance. They are almost completely detached from Twitter (I believe you can post to Twitter from StockTwits but not read).

dchurchv• 14 years ago

Agree with @jschlesser. I think app.net will evolve more like a backbone for other activity streams (private, public, internal), not so much as a standalone "niche Twitter", but it's fine that it will start out that way, and can be funded that way. Could be wrong, but I think that's what the enthusiasm is really about, not just finding another social network to play with.

nostromo• 14 years ago

> and being distributed amongst the segregated tech startup community will prevent so many different types of people from using it

For what it's worth, when I joined Twitter it was also a tech ghetto. Kevin Rose, Leo Laporte, Guy Kawasaki, and Veronica Belmont were all in the top 10 most followed accounts.

dinkumthinkum• 14 years ago

Is this tongue in cheek? I don't think this is what theu are gong for ...

phil• 14 years ago

That approach worked great for Quora early on.

samstave• 14 years ago

I think the model could be verticalized and spun out as a semi-silo'd location for enthusiasts of [topic]

possibilistic• 14 years ago

I know that this service may become valuable for a large number of the HN crowd. It might be up my alley for a price of $10/yr or so. But at $50/yr, I cannot justify its expense.

That said, I wish Caldwell the best of luck. In the future hopefully he can provide tiered pricing plans.

jschlesser6• 14 years ago

Its not about destroying or replacing twitter or fb. Thats unlikely and not the goal. Its about new uses. T and FB have defined their contexts and rules. The infrastructure may look very similar but the universe of contexts and possibilities for non T and FB contexts is the point. The space of uses outside of T and FB is vast when publicity and ad focused mining isnt the core driver of business. FB and T have decided to compete for belly fat ads, thats the real shame. However they are both still revolutionary in terms of societal impact, they are just going to coerce their usage to fit their business model. Egyptian protesters and new moms posting baby photos could care less about belly fat ads. I truly sincerely hope both services find a more relevant way so that all models flourish.

jschlesser6• 14 years ago

Any reader of my comments should know im a supporter but not employed or beholden to app.net in any way and my opinions are solely based on my interpretation of publicly available info and informal interactions with people inside the app.net community. The actual apis and rules arent final but dalton has made many public commitments and has a history of doing what he says he will do. The work behind app.net didnt spring up overnight. I assume some vc money is in there somewhere so i wouldnt necessarily go vc bashing either. It looks a lot more like a pivot and if there are vcs involved, good on ya for backing it.

briandear• 14 years ago

I sue Tweetbot on my iPhone and can't remember ever seeing an ad. This idea that twitter is getting cluttered by advertising is just a myth.

albedoa• 14 years ago

Can you point to someone who is making that claim?

Jaigus• 14 years ago

The idea of twitter/facebook not appealing to their users enough may be a bit exaggerated. Yes, facebook/twitter must please their advertisers, however they only have those advertisers paying them because they have many users/subscribers. To keep advertisers coming to them, surely they must keep users happy so they can stay and even hope to attract more?

Now I'm sure having to cater to the advertisers certainly affects the decision making(even a bit adversely at times), however their massive following is essentially what makes them valuable.

I also notice that whenever this idea is challenged, I only see people simply parroting his belabored battle-cry of "catering to the users" without actually giving any concrete examples. I'm not against app.net's idea, I just believe the true novelty of this project is creating a micro-twitter(which can also be created on twitter by simply following certain people) for affluent tech people, and _keeping_ it that way via the subscription fee.

Besides that, I haven't read or heard of anything that they plan to do fundamentally different than twitter. Honestly, even if they do, and it actually proves to be a great feature that users love, I don't see why twitter can't simply copy it and perhaps even make it better.

sylvinus• 14 years ago

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.

talleyrand• 14 years ago

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.

guscost7• 14 years ago

Internet and power are not free.

_sh• 14 years ago

Once you've paid for Internet and power, being 'social online' is indeed free.

comex• 14 years ago

@jayneely: Free-for-students is a bad way to go. Most students can't contribute much value, and it leaves out all the young people that either can't afford or chose not to go to college.

@christopher: I think there's value in some kind of tiered pricing model, especially when it comes to enabling students - in a managed, not free for all, manner - to contribute positively to the ecosystem. Perhaps that's the educator in me.

@elliottpayne: I think there's a broader issue of elitism & the digital divide baked into @adn, but that's a bit out of scope of this topic. But it's a weird suggestion that students can't add value

This is a thread from the site, but I'm quoting it here because it's relevant to the discussion about what kind of community app.net will become. The first two comments make me uneasy: even if there is value in excluding/discouraging people who don't contribute positively-- which is true for a site like Hacker News, but not so much, I think, for a Twitter-like site where you only see the activity of people you follow; the Global stream is an exception, but it'll only take a little more growth before it becomes unusable anyway-- trying to judge from a blank slate whether someone who might sign up for the site is likely to contribute value, especially based on such vague metrics as "ability to pay $50" and "student", runs the risk of being elitism for the sake of elitism. For some, $50 is enough of a barrier that they'll only sign up if they're especially interested (a sign that they'll contribute value); for others, it's little more than an impulse purchase. As for students, I agree that the site should avoid favoring students over people who don't go to college, but as a rather biased student (and backer), I contest the sentiment that students can't contribute value or need to be "managed" more than your average slightly older entrepreneur. ;p Even though age probably weakly correlates with quality, the goal of the site should not be to slightly increase average quality, but, if anything, to ensure that the highest quality users, the right edge of the bell curve, are there, which exclusionary principles will discourage.

Of course, the $50 is not actually some kind of proof of relevance but actual funding for the operation of the site; it can't be avoided. But I think it should mostly be considered a necessary evil, and there should be a focus on letting people who are unwilling to pay it but are strongly interested in the community get in anyway, such as with a sponsorship system.

bitsoda• 14 years ago

Am 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 visibility.

Note: There's nothing wrong with using your own money to fund your product, but some more transparency would be nice.

nathan_f77• 14 years ago

I had the same thought, but that's not the case: https://alpha.app.net/dalton/post/32618

TorBoT• 14 years ago

What do they mean "claim" twitter name? do they mean claim your app.net name?

ChrisBanner• 14 years ago

The intent was that a twitter user could reserve the same username for App.net. In reality, you can reserve any username -- it doesn't have to be a twitter handle.

hxf148• 14 years ago

I've upgraded my account and am going to take a spin at a html5 app. It's an interesting group of people and even if it does not get massive scale it's fun.

Also keep in mind that I don't think app.net wants to be Twitter, it wants to be the back end public messaging system for any and all kinds of apps that have a need for a messaging or notification network.

dylanz• 14 years ago

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.

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".

charlieok2• 14 years ago

"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?

nilium• 14 years ago

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.

deepGem• 14 years ago

There'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.

jasonhanley• 14 years ago

Heh, so there's going to be just under 10,000 people on app.net.

drharris• 14 years ago

Does anyone else see this and think, "It's like Twitter, except for people who want to complain about Twitter all the time"? That's the vibe I get. There's no way those high school friends I reconnected with are paying for this. There's no way my uncles or cousins are signing up for this. There's no way more than ~5% of my real-life social network will. It seems like yet another Silicon Valley niche product. Maybe I'm wrong, I just don't see it for the 95% of the world that doesn't care about T/FB monetization.

dev1n• 14 years ago

"If it weren't for the last minute, nothing would get done."

A quote hanging above my Grandma's oven :-P

Congrats Dalton

axusgrad• 14 years ago

I think most people signing up now are doing it for the land-rush of usernames.

App.net funded with $500,000.

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