Where Did App.net Go Wrong?

http://arielmichaeli.com/2014/07/where-did-app-net-go-wrong/

by arielm • 12 years ago

26 48 12 years ago

opendais2• 12 years ago

I think it really boiled down to the fact the market for "paid Twitter" was too small to support the kind of network effects required to create an entire ecosystem.

astrodust2• 12 years ago

I have never heard even one compelling argument for why paying for app.net makes sense.

I pay money and...? I honestly have no idea.

smackfu2• 12 years ago

I pay money and... they don't keep trying to stuff monetizing junk all up in my twitter feed.

Titanbase• 12 years ago

Everything you want to know about App.net is here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dalton_Caldwell

It's an interesting project!

bentlegen2• 12 years ago

You pay money, Dalton becomes a partner at YC.

Karunamon• 12 years ago

Wasn't the twitter-wannabe just one of a number of applications on their platform?

minimaxir• 12 years ago

It was the initial use case, and it was the use case that App.net crowd funded $500k for.

First impressions mean a lot.

opendais2• 12 years ago

It was the primary application at the start and without a large enough userbase, no other applications ever achieved significant adoption.

smackfu2• 12 years ago

Main problem was that Twitter wasn't quite bad enough for people to stop using it. Even if the website / official app was a mess, most of the App.net early adopters use third-party Twitter clients anyways.

If even the people who paid for App.net were still using both systems, and cross-posting, that wasn't really sustainable once the initial interest was gone.

jhardcastle• 12 years ago

Site appears to be down, Google cache version: http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:RxMTeUF...

arielm13• 12 years ago

Thanks for sharing the cached version! The blog is back up and is fortified with a few layers of caching :)

knd775• 12 years ago

You really can tell when people have websites not meant for any significant traffic. Site is down.

mikeash• 12 years ago

To me, it was two things:

1. As a Twitter replacement, it solved the wrong problem. They seemed to think that the flaw with Twitter is that it's free. In my opinion, the flaw with Twitter is that it's centralized.

2. Every time I mention how the Twitter replacement isn't compelling, people would talk about how that's not what it is, it's a general platform for Stuff that just happens to be something you can use to build a Twitter replacement. But they never really explained what it was, just that it wasn't merely a Twitter replacement.

bentlegen2• 12 years ago

People didn't plunk down $50 for a "general platform for stuff".

arielm13• 12 years ago

Well said.

xxxmadraxxx• 12 years ago

"...They seemed to think that the flaw with Twitter is that it's free. In my opinion, the flaw with Twitter is that it's centralized..."

The flaw that made me leave Twatter for App.net was the ever-increasing amount of stinking advertising [laughingly known as 'Sponsored Tweets' ] littering my stream, combined with the relentless barrage of spam emails from Twitter themselves.

Alpha offered everything Twatter did, as well as double length posts and without spamverts. Unfortunately [and I agree with previous comments on App.net's piss-poor marketting] few people even knew it existed.

bmm6o• 12 years ago

Where did App.net go right? I generally like the vision that App.net was promoting, but when you are trying to build something that relies on network effects for success you need to remove every impediment to attracting users. They've had several glaring impediments since day 1.

arielm13• 12 years ago

I think trying to monitize the way they did was a big mistake. A social network isn't really a business tool and mass-market consumers aren't ready to shell our a monthly fee for a new and unnecessary way to communicate.

Twitter, the giant that's integrated into pretty much everywhere, is still fighting for engagement and new signups. So for a company to come and challenge them with such a vague value proposition is plain bad.

yllus• 12 years ago

I think that makes sense. I wonder though if WhatsApp is an outlier - did they always charge a flat fee to use their messenger client, or is that a recent thing (after they attracted immense numbers of users)?

ksec• 12 years ago

They just dont have a sustainable business model. That's all.

arielm13• 12 years ago

I think if their concept was clearer the business model would have evolved to be effective. It's hard to get it right the first time but with a strong enough base they could have iterated.

dmarlow• 12 years ago

I still don't know what it is...

beejiu• 12 years ago

The only thing that went wrong with App.net is that it felt like you had to be part of some inner circle to understand what they were actually doing. Their communication and marketing was, and still is, diabolical. I still have no idea what they are selling.

arielm13• 12 years ago

I totally agree, a clear message can make it or break it for a service, especially one with such a strong competitor.

pjbrunet• 12 years ago

It didn't solve the problem of centralized control.

mrcwinn2• 12 years ago

App.net was born out of a visceral, snap reaction to Twitter's API decisions that, really, the mainstream didn't really care about. That's not enough to build a product on top of. What's more, while I sympathize with the developers who were negatively impacted by Twitter's decisions, one could argue the choices they made were _right_ for the product. If you believe that, App.net's decision, the inverse, was _wrong_ for the product (reducing quality and focus).

Or in short, most people just don't care.

arielm13• 12 years ago

That's definitely what it feels like, a visceral reaction, but from everything I could piece together it was about much more. Dalton tried to create a platform for communication that could power a twitter-like service.

But... he never really explained it and in the absence of a message everyone had to figure out the message on their own using what's most obvious.

That's how it became a twitter-clone/wannabe.

mrcwinn2• 12 years ago

Yes, I agree. Selling a platform is different from selling a product - especially when you're speaking directly to the consumers. Consumers want the product, not the platform.

itistoday2• 12 years ago

Charging money. Centralized. Personal data stored in the clear.

palakchokshi• 12 years ago

I still don't know what app.net is about after reading their About section. Seems like a mish mash of products. Their messaging is very confusing. I couldn't figure out why, me as a user, would ever download and use their app(s)?

pbreit• 12 years ago

App.net's problem was that it was a philosophy, not something that people would actually want to use.

bradshaw1965• 12 years ago

At least part of the problem was the resentment that people felt about needing to sign up to paid service to keep their identity and follow their friends. Their was implied social proof in the very beginning but with a pretty big arm twist.

m52go2• 12 years ago

I'm the first person to criticize free online media, but they should have remained free until gaining a critical mass of users and THEN charged them to stay on.

That's how Twitter should work...think Lady Gaga or Barack Obama are going to leave Twitter over a $200 annual fee now? Nope, but they're sure as hell not joining an unproven network with an upfront $20 annual fee.

Of course, you'd have to be clear about this in advance. Nobody likes an unexpected bait-and-switch.

arielm13• 12 years ago

Or use some sort of a freemium model much like the one they ended up doing anyway.

m52go2• 12 years ago

I should have been clearer...I think that model is effective only when users who have disproportionally significant influence are charged.

So Gaga and Obama should actually be charged an annual fee of something like $20,000. Maybe it's tiered, so someone like Robert Scoble pays $2,000.

Going by number of followers, Gaga's influence is an entire order of magnitude higher than Scoble's, so it makes sense for her fee to be an order of magnitude higher.

Everyone else below a certain threshold is free. I wouldn't (and shouldn't) pay for Twitter...it gives me little influence.

imsofuture• 12 years ago

Seems like a lot of beanplating around "it wasn't actually compelling to enough people to make money".

arielm13• 12 years ago

As a twitter-clone only, sure. But I think it was supposed to be about much more than that.

eridius• 12 years ago

If Dalton’s idea of the platform was really to create a Twitter-like messaging service he should have made it easier to access.

This is actually the complete opposite of what happened, and I think the key to where they went wrong.

Dalton created a Twitter-like messaging service as a way of showcasing what App.Net could do. But he seemed very intent on downplaying the service and focusing on App.Net as a platform. This is what caused all the confusion; most of the actual users of App.Net were primarily users of Alpha, and anyone who was creating a product with the App.Net platform were facing the confusion of people thinking that's like creating a product with Twitter. I believe the reason Dalton did this was because his dream was for him to solely care about the platform and for other developers to provide all the apps. But nobody else was going to provide an Alpha clone, nor should they.

What Dalton really should have done was immediately spun off Alpha into its own full-fledged product. Give it a snappy name (heck, Alpha isn't too bad, certainly better than App.Net), give it its own domain, and make it very clearly a distinct product from App.Net. Then he could brand it all he wants as "built on top of App.Net" or whatever, and having login, etc. go through the app.net domain, but ultimately it should have been immediately recognizable as what it was; a Twitter-like messaging service (with much better features), that was built on top of App.Net. Just like a third-party app would have been.

This would have made it much easier to understand. People talking about App.Net would be obviously talking about the platform, people talking about Alpha would be talking about the messaging service, and trying to encourage people to build new apps on top of the App.Net platform would have made far more sense than convincing people to build new apps on top of what they think is basically just a Twitter clone.

arielm13• 12 years ago

I fully agree. Separation would have made it easier to understand it's not the goal but rather an implementation.

Where Did App.net Go Wrong?

Related Stories