

App.net, like I need another bug tracker - astrojams
http://kerr.io/app-net-like-i-need-another-bug-tracker/

======
tptacek
The Svbtle branding here is A Bad Idea.

I got halfway down the page, to the part where he appears to have picked a bug
tracker project at random to call "me-too" and compare to a "Pascal for
Dummies" exercise (there's a Pascal book somewhere that mentions Twitter?
there's a high school that still teaches Pascal?) --- and started asking how
something like this had managed to make it to Svbtle.

Then I realized, "oh, it's wp-svbtle, whatever the fuck that is".

This is a design whose entire purpose is to mimic the Svbtle blog network and
confuse readers. Every design choice in it, from the duplication of Curtis'
(pointless) "Kudos" thingy to the stroke width of the rules, is made not for
its own sake but to duplicate the branding of someone else's site.

It's a jerk move all around, not just to Curtis, or to anyone else who has
decided to write for Curtis' network, but to readers, who deserve to know at a
glance who an author is, or in this case isn't, affiliated with or endorsed
by. And because it's an irritatingly obvious jerk move, it does a disservice
to the author as well, making their words a sideshow on their own site.

~~~
dcurtis
Not only is it a pixel-for-pixel duplication of the design, but now they're
copying my front-end code, too.

~~~
makmanalp
People copying things they like on the internet? _Never!_

Seriously, what did you expect? You created something beautiful. You formed a
visual brand that associated itself to good writing. You made it exclusive.

People wanted in. They copied it. You can see examples of this from nature
(animals imitating visual properties of other animals to make themselves more
scary etc) to modern design strategy (using similar colors / fonts to create a
subconscious mental association with something).

~~~
tptacek
Yes, this is human nature. But... now what? It's still irritating and
disrespectful of the reader, the people actually involved with Svbtle, and
even of the author's own content, which is obviously not important enough to
be posted without a totally unrelated provocation.

If you look carefully at Svbtle or _almost any other modern blog_ , it is not
hard to reverse engineer the rules that make these things look good: it's
simply font size, line width, leading, and minimal ornamentation. Just make a
new blog template that follows the same rules. Leave the "Kudos" thing out
while you're at it.

This isn't about sticking up for Dustin Curtis' exclusive rights to minimal,
readable blog templates. As approximately every detractor of Svbtle has
pointed out approximately always, Svbtle isn't the first site to use
minimalist black-on-white breathable sans with a faintly ruled sidebar.

This is about sites going out of their way to pretend an affiliation that they
don't have. IBM's blog template is horrible. It would be equally annoying and
disrespectful to clone it and change the "IBM" to "IBN".

------
taterbase
My problem with App.net is I just don't care.

I don't _need_ another social network. I don't _need_ ads removed from my
current social feed. I don't _need_ app.net.

If twitter died tomorrow something else would pop up. That's the nature of the
space. We don't need it and so we go where there is less friction. Ease of
use, ease of joining, and ease of finding those I care about most. That's all
that matters.

I see App.net becoming something much like svbtle. A highly curated space much
like a country club where only those willing to pay the entry fee are allowed
in.

Cool.

As long as the data is available publicly through feeds and other api's it
won't matter too much. It's still blogging, it's still tweeting, but now your
participants have been restricted. Not as much as Svbtle but enough to
encourage a certain atmosphere.

~~~
ninetax
I agree. Doesn't anyone who is bugged enough by ads just use Adblock?

~~~
fredoliveira
I suspect that you don't understand that this is not about the ads being
visible, but the ads being based on your data, and your content.

~~~
ninetax
OK, I understand a bit better now. I do like the idea that I am the customer,
not the product and that my data is mine to do with what I please, not
something I give away freely.

I guess my only quibble about App.net is that I've never personally seen the
appeal of the micro-blogging/twitter social model. I don't like to "follow"
people, and I like to say things to other people in more than 140/256
charters. I believe that there is a generally correlation between the length
of people's comments/text and their quality.

I would like to see a more integrated real time feed, i.e the music people
listen to, the movies they watch, where they eat so that developers can use it
to make recommendations to me. That would be awesome as long as I can have
fine grained control over who get access to what information.

I am excited to see if App.net is going to go in this direction.

------
citricsquid
> Once those two companies get their act together and improve their developer
> programs, the market will quickly loose interest in App.net.

isn't the point that Twitter and Facebook's shitty developer relations are a
symptom of their desire to monetise and therefore there is never going to be a
time when they have good developer relations?

~~~
MiguelHudnandez
Right, at one point, the developer interactions were the primary focus. Well,
secondary, right behind growing the user base.

------
jmduke
_If your senior high school computer science final project wasn’t building an
issue tracker or Twitter clone, then your high school either a) didn’t offer
computer science classes or b) you were a jock and didn’t take computer
science._

I think this is the first time I've actually been filled with hatred towards a
blog post.

------
tarr11
Dalton has managed to convince 8000 developers to cough up cash. He's got a
working alpha with a high level of community engagement. Those are substantial
accomplishments.

I wouldn't write it off just yet.

------
cmelbye
God... what? First off, which Pascal textbook would be both old enough to
include a floppy disk, yet new enough to include a Twitter clone? I simply
don't understand his main argument. App.net will be unsuccessful because it's
just a clone of Twitter and people won't support a Twitter clone? App.net is
certainly not and will not be a Twitter clone, and anyone who has spent more
than five minutes looking at the platform, its roadmap, its API docs, etc.,
would know that.

------
darkpicnic
Regardless of your opinions on whether or not app.net is a worthwhile
endeavor, I think Dalton is proving that the "pay for service" business model
still does exist and can be applied to internet services. For so long, the
norm was "build service people use for free, get a million users, figure out
business model" which inevitably leads to a) selling user info or b) targeting
people with ads.

Constantly trashing app.net is not seeing the bigger picture. Thankfully,
people like Dalton aren't as short-sighted.

------
gavanwoolery
Yeah, I would love for something like App.net to succeed, but unfortunately it
probably will not. Even if every developer supported it, its the consumers who
always have the last word. Consumers outnumber developers by at least 500:1,
and 99 percent of consumers do not care about the issues that developers face.
If you don't get consumers (i.e. non-developers) on your platform, it will die
(unless of course you are building B2B tools or something).

------
chrismonsanto
There isn't really any useful content in that rant to comment about, so I'm
going to go off topic a little bit:

"If your senior high school computer science final project wasn’t building an
issue tracker or Twitter clone, then your high school either a) didn’t offer
computer science classes or b) you were a jock and didn’t take computer
science."

Is this really true? My brain immediately turned off when I read this, but
then I realized I have no clue what people in high school usually program.

I'll go first: around 14 or 15 I wrote a bytecode compiler for some god awful
language that looked like the bastard child of Perl and Javascript... I guess
around late high school time I was mainly working on Smogon, a competitive
Pokemon website (still around and making money!) and NetBattle, an online
simulator for several Pokemon generations (now defunct and replaced by
www.pokemonshowdown.com)

So HN, what was your "senior high school project"?

------
bdunn
You can't compare something that requires a critical mass to be useful
(app.net, Facebook, Twitter) with issue tracking software.

B2B products, like bug trackers, can carve a niche and do rather well with
just a few hundred or thousand paid customers. Yes, they're not going to all
be Atlassian, but a solo founder charging 1,000 people $30 a month can live
_very_ comfortably. And you can drift along for a while and not ultimately
give up because "the big guys" are 1000x your size.

B2C products, like app.net, exist on an entirely different plane.

Disclaimer: I run a fairly new project management tool / bug tracker that
already has already replaced a considerable amount of my monthly income.

------
jagira
Developers flock to platforms where users are. Twitter and FB has users. So
devs write apps for FB and Twitter.

App.net, from where I see, looks like a platform with more developers than
users.

------
pmarsh
I would consider App.net successful if it pushes Facebook and Twitter to adopt
some of what App.net is setting out to accomplish.

Would it be great if App.net flourishes to the point of being a continued
relevant tool and site for years? Of course.

But its goals are worth keeping track of and working towards. No need to get
so worked up about it against it.

------
Irishsteve
Twitter was crap when it started, something happened which caused it to be
useful. App.net is crap, but maybe something useful will come out of it and
then we'll find it useful.

p.s I'm in the app.net alpha.

------
iamdann
It's not always about the idea. It's the execution.

------
wilfra
Something about using a svbtle clone and ripping app.net on it doesn't sit
well with me.

~~~
AznHisoka
What is svbtle in the first place (never even heard of it, and I bet 99% of
people haven't either)? Is it a theme? I have no clue why this needs to be
mentioned. WHy not just criticize his words?

~~~
tptacek
Svbtle is a blog network. Go to SVBTLE.COM to see who's writing for it; it's
the first thing you see on the site.

Whether or not something is part of SVBTLE is about as important a point as
whether it's written for Ars Technica, or for ZDNet: that is, not the most
important thing about the piece, but by absolutely no means irrelevant.

Also, had this been an actual Svbtle piece, it would have carried the frisson
of being a contrarian take on the work of another Svbtle author, since Svbtle
is where Dalton Caldwell announced App.net to begin with.

~~~
AznHisoka
ok so it's an elitist old boy's club? And this blog isn't part of it? Still do
not get what's the big deal.

~~~
tptacek
"Elitist old boy's club"? What does that even mean?

Are we really that insecure? That any time anybody chooses to affiliate
selectively in a new way, we have to cast aspersions?

