App.net: The Country Club of the Internet?

by tessr • 14 years ago

56 26 14 years ago

Apocryphon• 14 years ago

"I’m sure that a post bashing HN will be very well received on HN."

Actually, she's right. HN is nothing if not constantly self-introspective, and in the wild fast-paced world of startups, there's no such thing as bad publicity. I'm almost certain that HN as a whole will appreciate the attention.

That said, the way the article brings up HN seems to be a red herring. The barrier of entry to HN is far lower than that of App.net.

tessr• 14 years ago

Hah, well, I was surprised to get even FOUR upvotes. Good to know, I guess...?

Anyways, I had meant to bring up HN as more of an example of a bubble--both because it has an exclusive attitude (which is exemplified in part by a non-zero barrier to entry) as well as a self-selecting user base.

lucisferre• 14 years ago

I'll give you another one. Not sure I agree completely though. Most popular communities do deteriorate in the quality of the discussion over time (even this one, spend some time here, you'll see pretty quickly).

The truth is I think it is important for people to "choose" to be real consumers of the services (yes even content services) they feel provide value to them. Otherwise what's the incentive to do anything but pander to the masses to get "eyeballs". Most importantly, there is clearly room for both models, what your post suggests is a false dichotomy.

biesnecker• 14 years ago

"I think that diversity of thought is more refreshing."

Given that Facebook (attempts to) model our existing social networks, and that the vast majority of people socialize with people of significantly similar cultural and socio-economic backgrounds, this diversity of thought is already (for the majority) a lie. We don't go to Facebook to see how the "other" lives -- we go there to get updates on friends that are comfortingly similar to ourselves.

The people that are willing to pay app.net's admission fee are going to largely be people who socialize with other folks who are willing to pay app.net's admission fee. It's no different than the clientele at a high end restaurant, and the existence of such restaurants hasn't precluded the existence or utility of lower end restaurants.

cargo8• 14 years ago

I think "gatekeeping" may be a bit of a strong term for what's happening here.

I get where she is coming from, and it is something that should be acknowledged by the users of the site. The key point here is that the GOAL of App.net is not to cater to a different market (those able and willing to pay $50 to have an ad-free real-time network with control over their data).

This is just the economic impact of charging something for a service - it will limit the audience that will buy/use the product.

In particular, I think the comparisons to Hacker News and Quora are exactly what it will be like. Quora is a fantastic Q/A site, and as much of a fan as I am, it still has not reached the completely 'mass market' that yahoo answers is used by. In the same sense, Hacker News has very different content on average than, say, Reddit.

So long as the content creators (users) of App.net realize their audience and the effects that have been created by the circumstances and economics of the network, then it will still make sense.

So perhaps the call here should be for people simply to realize that App.net will never be Twitter. And /maybe/ that's a good thing.

crazygringo• 14 years ago

> It’s [HN] also boring as hell. It’s an echo chamber, a bubble.

Funny... the reason I like HN is because the comments are actually well-thought out and interesting.

I honestly can't understand how Twitter, with it's character limit and lack of threads, can provide more "interesting" "discussion".

jessepollak4• 14 years ago

I agree. I think that there are a lot of situations where homogeneous interests/views can preclude interesting conversations, but I don't think HN is a place where this applies.

The reason is, while HN may be filled with all people who like startups--in fact, it may be primarily white males--so many people know so many different things, and have so many different perspectives, that I consistently fin conversations of a higher quality than anywhere else on the Internet.

I agree with the OP that we should try not to limit who can participate in a forum because of high barriers of entry, but I'm extremely skeptical that said limitations actively lower the quality of conversations on a site like HN.

jmduke• 14 years ago

I think this is true only with regards to sort of the 'classic' elements of HN; discussions of technical matters, startups, and overall just strong advice is wonderful and keeps me coming back to the overflowing well.

Discussions that include fanboyism of any kind (politics, education, and Apple v. MS v. Google chief among them) are aggravating. But bad parts don't negate good parts.

mitra• 14 years ago

While this adds nothing to the conversation, I would like to think there is a strong contingent of Indian males at HN as well.

fudged71• 14 years ago

More generally than that, why is he characterizing the discussion quality of Twitter at all? Everyone's experience varies based on who's following who. I hardly get replies, for instance, because I hardly have any followers.

Vastly different platforms to compare.

jessepollak4• 14 years ago

Just a heads up, I'd be careful before you characterize the author as a 'he.'

bsphil• 14 years ago

As someone who doesn't really fit into HN (not really interested in startups, but like web design/development), I'd have to agree with the overall assertion. It feels a lot like an echo chamber, and I find myself often thinking "the rest of the world is a lot different than HN" after reading comments here.

mnicole• 14 years ago

Also the irony of saying HN is an echo chamber, when the primary content on my Twitter feed are retweets. Twitter is useless to me as a communicator, as someone that thrives on discussions and not abbreviated tidbits. Despite following only people I trust and admire, my feed is garbage. The single time I had a lengthy direct message conversation, it was a mess and a pain to have to add "..." to the end of each and then write the next message fast enough so that next person doesn't respond without all of the information. It really couldn't be a worse place to try to have serious conversations.

d21• 14 years ago

Reading this made me wonder why so much concern about segregation due to 50 dollars as an entry fee. You already have segregation on an important part of the world population in terms of:

-access to electricity -access to a computer-like device -access to an internet connection' -free time to participate in social networks

as far as battles against segregation go there seems to be a considerable number of more important causes.

lwat• 14 years ago

If App.net is anything like HN then sign me up!

datalus2• 14 years ago

Does this mean it's too late for me to get together my op-ed piece about App.net's "segregating" policies?

Seriously, though, do we know if the $50 upfront is only for this early stage or is that also the plan for when it goes live to the public? I would think there'd be a subscription option...

wmf• 14 years ago

I hear the subscription price will be... $50 per year. But seriously, I would hope Dalton is open-minded about the future evolution of his business model.

datalus2• 14 years ago

Well, for the kickstarter-like campaign they ran, $50 in one lump sum makes sense. I would hope when it's live, they would also offer a monthly payment plan as well.

md224• 14 years ago

The bottom line here is that almost everything has a cost. You can pay with money (App.net) or you can pay with freedom (Facebook / Twitter). Is there a third way besides pure charity?

mc32• 14 years ago

I was about to say the same thing. I also don't understand some of the direction of the complaint. The people she knows who signed up were male, and that's unfortunate because? Her female friends were not being dicouraged from signing up, were they? I have no idea why the anecdotal self-selection would be bad. Would it be disappointing if most of her readers were female? Or would it be unfortunate if most poeople visiting substance-abuse support communities were substance abusers?

Ok, so it's unfortunate that as far as she knows males signed up. But then, it's also bad that there is a $50 cost to entry. It's a qualitatively bad site (it's all these self-selecting guys), but I'd like it to be easier (dollar-free) to join a site I thought was the wrong direction in social?

If app.net is successful, what would prevent others from creating their own interest-driven sites? It's not as if reddit, flickr, etc. have unified users sharing and seeing everything anyway. People who go to those sites generally spend their time in/with specific groups. Just because "it's open" and there is free access does not ensure that people from disparate groups within those sites interact and share ideas. People in many sites tend to gravitate towards like-minded people or at least similarly-interested people.

Diversity of thought is a great goal, but in practice, people seldom look for people to genuinely question their beliefs.

csense• 14 years ago

I'm reading a little between the lines here. But I think this is what her answers would be:

> The people she knows who signed up were male, and that's unfortunate because?

A lack of diversity is a fundamental evil.

> Her female friends were not being di[s]couraged from signing up, were th[e]y?

Females must equal males in all things. Otherwise it's DISCRIMINATION by the GRAND EVIL SEXIST PIG CONSPIRACY.

> Would it be disappointing if most of her readers were female?

No. A mostly-female community is empowering. A mostly-male community is a sexist boys' club. THIS RULE HOLDS REGARDLESS OF ALL FACTS, REASONS, AND MITIGATING CIRCUMSTANCES.

> But then, it's also bad that there is a $50 cost to entry.

CAPITALISM AND MAKING MONEY are evil under all circumstances. In the future, everyone will work for the government, and all will be sweetness and light. Despite the fact that this was tried and failed miserably, as anyone who knows anything about the past 100 years of world history can tell you.

> I'd like it to be easier (dollar-free) to join a site I thought was the wrong direction in social?

The world owes me a handout. Obviously.

> If app.net is successful, what would prevent others from creating their own interest-driven sites?

OH NOES MORE CAPITALISTS IT'S SPREADING

mechanical_fish• 14 years ago

Yes, HN is a special-interest group. I actually liked it better when it was even more narrowly focused, back when it was mostly YC-funded companies and their friends, plus spies like myself. [1] It was probably even more "boring" then, for people who were not me: There were fewer contributors and a lot more focus on a particular subset of startups. It was even called "Startup News".

But what of it? It is not the job of any one site on the web to represent the whole world. That's what the rest of the web is for. Use that navigation bar!

Meanwhile, of course Twitter is exactly as diverse as you want it to be: It's much bigger, which is balanced because you control the mix of who you read. You can tweak your follower list to be fun and interesting. On the flip side, it's quite possible to tune your Twitter experience to be far narrower than HN ever has been. It's up to you.

As for App.net, yes, here in its earliest stages it definitely excludes people who can't afford $4.25 a month. [2] And that is too bad. Perhaps even unjust. However, dare I point out that in the USA it's pretty darned low on the list of unjust things: I literally just spent more than $4.25 in one day riding public transit, which suggests that Boston is, in a sense, at least 30 times more exclusive than App.net. [3] I'll reserve my supply of righteous anger for high rents, soaring medical costs, usurious check-cashing outfits, high broadband costs, and state university tuitions, I think.

(The biggest injustice of a $4.25 monthly fee is that it excludes people from places where US$4.25 is a lot of money. Here we must hold out hope that prices will fall over time. Which they almost certainly can do: It takes more money to invent a thing than to run it at scale.)

---

[1] Flaw Number One of the "country club" analogy is that country clubs don't publish their internal discussions to globe-spanning message boards where anyone can read them, including those of us who aren't yet computer scientists and don't have YC startups.

[2] Flaw Number Two of the "country club" analogy is that country clubs are considered snobbish not merely because they cost a lot, but because you can't necessarily join one simply by paying the fee. They reserve the right not to admit you even if you pay. AFAIK App.net does not, although presumably they'll boot you for policy violations.

[3] Oh, you think you'll save money by driving? Have you priced the parking in Boston lately? Calculated the per-mile cost of operating your car?

mistercow• 14 years ago

HN is a circle-jerky echo chamber? Really? I can't really disagree strongly enough with this.

Back when I was a reddit junkie, I found that my use of the site was actively making me unhappy. Sure, people came from more diverse backgrounds, but the structure of the community encourages rhetorical maneuvering and brutal riposte. The problem was that I was good at it, and I was really addicted to the absurd emotional attachment that I had to watching people agree with me. Of course, that attachment went both ways, but as with most experiences, the negative experiences were more mentally prominent than the positive. The result was that I felt bitter a lot of the time, and when I channeled that bitterness into acerbic responses, I was rewarded. This is not good for the soul.

This, I think, illustrates two important points about exclusivity.

First, the cutthroat nature of high-karma commenting on reddit is in many ways a direct result of the site's laissez faire voting. Anyone can downvote anyone, and the exact total of those votes is then shown to everyone. I made this problem worse by writing Reddit Uppers and Downers, which shows the upvote and downvote counts separately. Two subtle but important ways that HN elevates the discourse are by reducing the information presented by voting, and by regulating the downvote privilege. One could decry this as "elitism", but I think the positive effect it has on discussion should not be underestimated.

Second, my problem became worse as the reddit community became less exclusive. Arguably, this could have been my own inability to cope with a broader variety of viewpoints, but I think the famed Eternal September problem was the larger issue.

The most rapid decline was in the use of downvotes. The guideline that it should be reserved for unproductive comments became ignored more and more with time. This effect was infectious even for established users, and the result was that the downvote button became a "dislike" button.

And more gradually, the level of discourse suffered as well. When I joined, reddit was a place where unusual and/or controversial opinions sparked interesting conversation. When I left, soon after the advent of the "sexual content relating to minors" rule, arguing that maybe the rule was a tad too broad would often get you labeled as a pedophile.

And the thing is, I still like seeing a comment get upvoted on HN. But what makes me happy is when someone disagrees with me and is willing to put thought into telling me why, and, if I'm lucky, actually convinces me to change my position.

If you want to maintain that scenario, you need to make sure that new members of the community are instated gradually enough that the community's principles aren't compromised. If that comes at the cost of a little intellectual diversity, then so be it.

dtmmax33• 14 years ago

Why the white male bashing? That is a very narrow minded view and I really hope that you can grow and see beyond race and gender. It is a big world out there and I recommend you go out and explore.

App.net: The Country Club of the Internet?

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