

First Month on app.net – Charts and Stats - dbuthay
http://diegobasch.com/first-month-on-app-net-charts-and-stats

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shell0x
I don't get the point on app.net. They seem to be an alternative to twitter,
just without ads and user funded. Ok, so far, but why should a developer trust
their plattform more than any other one? App.net isn't open source like
status.net/identi.ca, so if they close developers will be still screwed. I
don't see any reason why I should pay money to finance a closed source
plattform, sorry. Also the most people are on twitter, so it wouldn't make any
sense to change to app.net. Maybe I'm wrong about it, but I don't trust them
more than Twitter.

~~~
diego
Why do you need to trust them? It's a commercial relationship like any other.
I don't even think about the issue of trust.

For me it's very simple: I pay to have fun with the service. I've spent more
time playing with app.net in the past month than I spent watching Netflix in
the past year. How many people like me are out there? Who knows, that's the X
million dollar question.

To your second point, Twitter is not Facebook. You cannot replace Facebook
easily because you'd have to convince your friends and family to go elsewhere.
On Twitter I follow a bunch of interesting people who tweet news, links,
thoughts. I don't need _the same_ people to be at app.net. As long as there
are 100-200 interesting and active people for me to follow / interact with,
that's good enough.

~~~
jmathai
Their ethos is trust. From their site:

> Our most valuable asset is your trust.

That's always been my issue with app.net. I don't think they're positioning
themselves to deliver on their own brand promise. It's an entirely separate
issue than if they'll be successful and how much value their users derive.

But that really has me wonder...what the hell?

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dave1010uk
Does anyone know how these numbers compare to identi.ca / status.net?

Has everyone who has signed up for app.net used status.net and found it
lacking; have people not heard of status.net or does app.net do something I
don't know about?

~~~
diego
It seems that the people who paid for app.net (myself included) are very
motivated to get their money's worth. There's a group of people who seem to be
posting all the time. Some have thousands of posts already.

I spent $100 to have developer access. For me it's fun to observe the
community develop, and see what interesting insights I can get from the data.
In my case I don't feel the money I paid is significant. The time I spend
online is the real cost. I suspect it's the same for many other people there.

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sjs382
Stats are great and all, but what is the _use_ of App.net?

Last week during Hurricane Isaac, most of NOLA was without power, our street
was flooded, and my only communication with the outside world was via text
messaging and Twitter. Twitter kept us up-to-date re: storm projections,
conditions of the city, and everything else we needed to know. I did some
searching of App.net for Isaac-related posts, and didn't find anything useful.

This is the moment that I realized that App.net is (at the moment) nothing
more than a toy and novelty. Twitter is a UTILITY and it was indispensable
during Isaac.

Even immediately post-Isaac, it was how we learned what stores (and bars) were
open, where to get gas, and the status of roads and the utility companies.
Hell, we even tweeted photos of road hazards to @nolaready and they were taken
care of.

I'm a backer of App.net and I hope this reverses, but the current state is
very clear.

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smartician
20k users -- does that mean they've broken the $1 million annual revenue
threshold? Nice!

~~~
jmathai
20k paying users as fast as they acquired them is absolutely amazing. TBH I
don't see the appeal other than leaving Twitter for something new or niche.
Perhaps that's enough? I'm not sure.

Part of me says Dalton is on to something. The numbers seem to be evidence of
that. Another part of me can't wrap my head around the value proposition. But
it exists somehow. If I'm right then the numbers represent people who are
signing up out of sheer curiosity and wouldn't renew (unless it's automatic).
That would infer (to me) that the community might not be sustainable.

It's fascinating nonetheless.

~~~
terhechte
I've always found the value proposition to be rather clear. In fact, I was one
of the really early ones to back App.net because I liked the idea so much. I
think it can be compared to a free gym versus an expensive one. The free gym
is nice, because it doesn't cost me anything, so I go there. But since it's
free there're all kinds of things that bug me: There're way too many people, I
always have to wait till I can use a device, the devices are old and of bad
quality, and especially since it's free I don't feel very inclined to really
use it. I go there a couple of times, and that's it. Now the expensive gym is
top class everywhere, the devices are great, the people I meet there are
really interesting, and since I pay a lot per month, I'm also interested in
using it as much as possible. Loss aversion makes me actually go there quite
often in order to not get a bad conscience (since I paid so much for it). It's
the same with app.net I think: All the people there actually care. The quality
of discussion is really good, people are friendly, there're tons of
interesting things going on, the API is really good and we as developers get a
say in how it should be changed. They actually ask and listen for advice to
make the best API possible. I've worked (a lot) with the Facebook, Twitter,
and Instagram API, and in all these examples, there're always things that
suck, and you can't do anything about it. On ADN, there's actually a good
chance that it'll be fixed.

A good API, on the other hand, means that there'll be huge innovation on the
client front. Not now; right now, most things look like Twitter, and there're
many clients which are all a tad basic. But give it some time to evolve. Soon,
ADN will have quality discussions, quality clients, and lots of innovative
features since it is so open to changes (as opposed to Twitter, who at some
point became _very_ opposed to changes).

If you ask me right now, I'd say the big value proposition of ADN is the
quality of the discussion, if you ask me in 5 months, I guess I'll answer that
it's the fantastic client ecosystem.

EDIT: I thought I should mention that I'm the author of the ADM Mac client
#appetizer (<http://www.instadesk-app.com/appetizer>)

~~~
jmathai
That makes sense. Perhaps I under estimate the market size for it. People do
pay for services on the Internet but they're typically services that offer
tremendous value, can't be found for free or has an element of importance
(security for a service that handles money).

In my opinion, there are free alternatives to ADN (namely, Twitter) and the
value of simply participating in a community isn't one that I believe a large
# of people would pay for.

Keep in mind, ADN is a venture funded business. I'm just not seeing it.

All that said, I hope they figure something out. I have talked to Dalton and
one of my friends works on it. I hope you're able to do something with the
#appetizer as well.

~~~
terhechte
Personally, I think that the funding success for ADN is showcasing that there
could be a market for non-freemium and non-free services. Another contender
here is the economist, which is one of the very, very few journalistic
products that makes money with a pay wall. The reason, again, being that they
offer very high quality.

I would also pay for an online newspaper that lacks advertisement and employs
really good journalists to paint a picture that is as close to the truth as
possible. The less ties between a newspaper and any industry, the less the
chance that a story is pulled because the company in question places lots of
advertisement in the newspaper.

It's true that most people wouldn't want to pay for a community, many people
on Twitter only use it to read what celebrities are up to. However, I don't
think that a social network needs to be as big as Facebook anymore to be
successful - or Twitter, or Instagram. As long as there's a vibrant community,
that is dedicated to the service, and solid growth, everything is fine.

Especially since Facebook (at least for me) already satisfies the 'friends'
kind of social network. I have all my contacts there, so for engaging with
them, I go to Facebook, I don't need another service. If I join another
service, then because the value proposition is not about friends, but about
something different. Badoo is a success because their value proposition is
about dating, and Twitter is a success because they offer many-to-many
friendships and open celebrities. Again, Instagram was a success because they
changed the mapping, instead of friends -> content they went for content ->
friends.

As long as a network doesn't compete with Facebook on their core values, i
guess they're fine.

On Twitter, I don't care if there're 10Million or 100Million other users, I
can only see so many. So as long as there're _enough_ users on ADN I'd guess
that I'm happy there.

Oh, I'm also just trying to explain what I think about where this is going,
I'm not trying to defend anything, sorry if it sounds like that :)

Thanks, Appetizer is in many ways a side project right now, but it's fun
working on it. Also, while we're at it, I like the OpenPhoto approach, I
really want to install it once I find some time. Had it on my todo list for
months now. I'm unhappy with most current online photo solutions, and having
them on my own server sounds just about right. I wish you best of luck there
:)

~~~
jmathai
I truly hope you're right. I wouldn't personally pay for ADN (I don't think)
but I do wish there were more services online that were funded directly by
customers. I think the web would be a better place if more of those sites
existed and users got more accustomed to not having everything for "free".

There are a couple online services I absolutely love paying for. I wish there
were more. ADN seems like it might be that for a larger number than I had
originally thought.

Here's to the future of everyone using Appetizer to post photos from their
OpenPhoto site ;).

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Tichy
Is it possible to read app.net posts without being a member? Is there a
firehose of tweets? If people need to pay to read tweets it would be really
counterproductive...

~~~
diego
Yes, for example:

<https://alpha.app.net/global/>

I don't think you can read the posts programmatically (including metadata)
unless you pay for developer access to the api.

~~~
Tichy
Thanks! It reminds me of Twitter a lot, somehow :-)

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shamsensei
i say we take this discussion on at app.net. The thread view there is the key
difference here :)

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cyarvin
I already see spam (with t.co links) on the alpha.app.net page. Surely nuking
spam and spammers shouldn't be hard for a paid, centralized service like
app.net?

Identi.ca also appears to be full of spam. Basically nothing will kill a
public space faster or deader. There is a certain set of users who will stick
around in a chat room/feed/forum/whatever full of spambots, but it's not a
high-quality audience and doesn't tend to grow much.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
That's not spam, that's people cross-posting from Twitter.

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markmm
I was dismissive at first of app.net, but I think its great they are getting
some build up of users. To have an alternative to Twitter can only be a good
thing.

