
App.net State of the Union - mergy
http://blog.app.net/2014/05/06/app-net-state-of-the-union/
======
moot
I found myself in the same exact position with Canvas/DrawQuest earlier this
year. Everyone (including myself) was laid off a few months ago, but we'd
hoped to keep the app running with the remaining revenue/cash-on-hand and
volunteered time (cut short by a recent hack).

It sucks, but I think we'll see more of it in the coming months/year. A lot of
the seed-funded apps/companies from the past few years simply won't represent
later-stage venture opportunities, and may find themselves in a position where
they can't raise additional capital but can keep the service afloat without
the payroll overhead.

~~~
diggan
Kind of off topic but what keeps you from open sourcing it and hosting with
some provider that loves be showed in the light of open source?

~~~
criley2
When people say "why not open source it", I begin to question something:

\- Are you saying, "why not pay yourself to spend many hours working your
codebase into something that can be, at a minimum, copied down and installed
successfully on hardware that you don't control" that doesn't violate any IP
and only includes code you are legally permitted to open source

\- Or are you saying: "Just open up the repo as-is and see what happens!"

It seems the latter option (just dump everything) is the only feasible option
for a business who cannot afford additional development, but is probably
immoral and illegal (you likely don't have all the rights to ALL of the code).

The first option sounds great but if moot doesn't have money in the business
to pay himself to do all of that work... are you suggesting he just volunteer
a large amount of his personal time to do a bunch of free work for a failing
business? I can understand why a developer would prefer to get paid for their
effort (and the type of developer who wishes to work for free, by default,
wouldn't be in this position and would have open sourced the project from the
get go...)

~~~
bri3d
For products in the hardware, gaming, platform, and OS space, I understand
that a lot of code is often bought, licensed, or shared between companies in a
manner that would prohibit open-sourcing the software without a time-consuming
IP hunt.

However, I don't think I've ever worked at a web startup that didn't require
all employee and contractor-contributed code be granted irrevocably and
without limitation to the company, and the last few companies I've worked at
have also required that all third-party dependencies be licensed in such a way
that the company could use them in an unlimited commercial or non-commercial
manner.

Everything I've worked on in the last 5+ years could, I think, be open-sourced
with the flip of a switch without IP or legal issue provided the company
decide to do so. In a few cases I know about, projects I worked on were open-
sourced after I left without even notifying me.

Do I think it's a bit irritating and potentially somewhat immoral? Sure. I'd
have liked knowing that my code was open-sourced retroactively, if for no
other reason than to add it to my OSS resume.

But I've never worked in a web startup where my employer wasn't effectively
free of IP-debt, or one where the "flip the switch and-open source it" method
wasn't legally viable.

I think I agree with your point, though: "just open source it when it dies" is
a naive argument that ignores how much work putting code out there can really
be.

~~~
furyofantares
I think you are probably right but I am curious how many web startups you've
worked for. This is something I always wonder when someone says "I've never
worked for a company that does X"

~~~
bri3d
Six.

That's a very solid general criticism of my "well X has been true for me"
style of post. I'm not trying to imply that my experience is comprehensive by
any means - it certainly isn't.

I did find it quite interesting that the concept of open-sourcing a web
company's software was fraught with legal concerns, because to the best of my
knowledge other people could freely open source my last six years of work
output without a single IP qualm. I'm obviously not inclined to think that my
experience has been entirely out-of-the-ordinary, although that absolutely may
be the case.

~~~
furyofantares
Thanks. It wasn't really intended as a criticism, it's just something I wonder
whenever I see posts of that form (and I often find myself writing posts of
that form and then wonder how it'll be interpreted by the audience.)

------
mcone
"The bad news is that the renewal rate was not high enough for us to have
sufficient budget for full-time employees. After carefully considering a few
different options, we are making the difficult decision to no longer employ
any salaried employees, including founders. Dalton and Bryan will continue to
be responsible for the operation of App.net, but no longer as employees."

Did these guys burn through over $3 million in less than a year? They got $2.5
million in August 2013. ([http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/14/app-net-new-
funding/](http://techcrunch.com/2013/08/14/app-net-new-funding/))

~~~
pcl
Interesting. The $2.5M that mcone mentioned was venture from Andreeson
Horowitz, not subscription revenue. Also, according to CrunchBase [1], their
parent company has raised $7M total. I wonder if this announcement means that
the parent company is shutting down, or the employees of that company are no
longer working on App.net in a full-time capacity.

[1] [http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/mixed-media-
labs](http://www.crunchbase.com/organization/mixed-media-labs)

~~~
neuroscr
The parent company is still there. It pretty much means, they're pivoting with
all the money they raised.

~~~
neuroscr
I can confirm they did lay-off most of their staff though.

------
davidu
They renewed me without any reminder. I had forgotten about the service.
That's irksome. And I'm willing to bet a VERY LARGE number of the renewals
were people just like me.

There is no business there, and worse, they auto-renewed people without a
single reminder it was coming.

~~~
davidjgraph
Same here. They did offer a refund in the email. My thoughts were that I like
the idea and I didn't want to hit them with a refund. I switched off the auto-
renew thinking I bet they'll send me an email to say my subscription is
expiring and decide then if I want it again.

I'll bet 80% of subscribers have done likewise since the emails went out and
next years update will be less rosy...

~~~
loceng
You had already turned off auto-renew, and they billed you anyway ?

~~~
Argorak
As far as I understand, he turned off auto-renew after they charged him and
expects to be sent an email once his account expires so that he can decide
again.

------
jaredcwhite
It's frustrating news because the platform never actually got to the point
where it could be used as back-end infrastructure in the manner of something
like, say, Stripe. In other words, I couldn't built a website where users
simply sign up/in, use the service, share content, etc., and not really be
aware they're using App.net under the hood. I think App.net shot itself in the
foot by being implemented more or less as a Twitter clone to start with. That
meant that there was constantly a branding problem -- user wonders "Why am I
on Website X and they're asking me to create an App.net account...what's
that?!?!"

We still need a ubiquitous social/identity/billing platform that undergirds
the web, yet can be used seamlessly by devs of any particular site without
exposing the guts of said service. I'm waiting for someone to actually build
that...waiting...waiting...

~~~
ninthfrank07
Check out [https://tent.io](https://tent.io) and
[https://cupcake.io](https://cupcake.io). There's not much going on at the
moment because everybody is waiting for the next version of the Tent protocol
(0.4), which will be released in a few months.

I am also excited by [http://maidsafe.net](http://maidsafe.net) in the long
term, because it replaces the web altogether.

~~~
steveklabnik
Has tent fixed the massive issues with their protocol? When it first came out,
I opened about 30 issues on the repository. They basically let them all get
quiet and then closed them without comment. One or two had a bunch, though.

EDIT: turns out it was 18, not 30:
[https://github.com/tent/tent.io/issues/created_by/steveklabn...](https://github.com/tent/tent.io/issues/created_by/steveklabnik?sort=updated&state=closed)

~~~
ninthfrank07
I think the major issue with Tent was that their development efforts had
always been divided between two Tent servers. Tentd, the reference
implementation used by self-hosters, and their proprietary multi-tenant server
that powers [https://micro.cupcake.io](https://micro.cupcake.io). But in a
blog post in November 2013 ([https://cupcake.io/blog/2013/new-tent-
server](https://cupcake.io/blog/2013/new-tent-server)), they announced that
they will stop the development of Tentd and open source their multi-tenant
server. The development of [https://flynn.io](https://flynn.io) (another
Cupcake project) will simplify the deployment of the multi-tenant server. The
first preview release of Flynn was announced two weeks ago
([https://cupcake.io/blog/2014/flynn-preview-
release](https://cupcake.io/blog/2014/flynn-preview-release)).

There hasn't been much updates on Tent since the last office hours in January
([https://tent.io/officehours/2014-01-28](https://tent.io/officehours/2014-01-28)),
but Daniel said a few hours ago that they will announce May office hours in
the next few days
([https://micro.cupcake.io/posts/https%3A%2F%2Fdaniel.cupcake....](https://micro.cupcake.io/posts/https%3A%2F%2Fdaniel.cupcake.is/KuoQbRIW-
hiFKu0OH3WBTQ)).

I'm really excited for the new features in Tent 0.4
([https://github.com/tent/tent.io/issues?labels=v0.4&page=1&so...](https://github.com/tent/tent.io/issues?labels=v0.4&page=1&sort=updated&state=open))
and I can't wait to self-host Tent on the new multi-tenant server!

~~~
danielsiders
Absolutely correct. We'll also release a protocol validator for 0.4 prior to
the server refactor to help other folks implementing other servers.

------
jusben1369
I'm always think "rage" startups are the most risky. App.net was based on a
super small but vocal group that hated advertising in their social apps.
Dwolla is a payments based rage sort of startup born from a founder who hated
paying 3% of his money to credit card fees. A very small, passionate, group
can convince each other that there must be enough people like them or even
similar enough to dramatically change their behavior (create a whole new
payment flow, try and get important and interesting information through a new
source) The problem is after that 5% of passionate users you just fall off a
cliff in terms of how much effort then next 5% and ultimately 95% will do.

~~~
snide
Agreed. Though it's easier to spot in retrospect. Crowds on the Internet can
look larger than they seem.

~~~
untog
It was kind of easy to spot at the time. App.net never really felt like it
took off.

------
windsurfer
I've been on HN for a long time. I've seen many app.net posts fly by. I've
read the start of many articles, been to their home page and even read their
"Learn more" page. _I still don 't understand what it is_. Is it something
new, or just a Facebook clone? How is it different from Mozilla Persona or
OAuth?

I am apparently, as a web developer, their target market. I think maybe their
disdain for marketing has caused their marketing and communication to suffer.

~~~
wmf
You might call it a social backend. Imagine Twitter+Facebook+Dropbox but with
all the UIs removed, so it's just a backend datastore with APIs. Then third
parties write apps that provide different UIs on that data.

~~~
windsurfer
But isn't Twitter without a UI or userbase just basically a database, only
controlled by a third party? What's the point of that? I already have MySQL
and Postgres, and they are free and open source.

~~~
eridius
It's a massive social graph + infrastructure for subscribing to data sources
(i.e. other users) and broadcasting messages from one source to all
subscribers (including push).

And that's just Twitter. ADN includes a lot more than Twitter does.

------
unreal37
Talk about a buried lede.

They are profitable as long as they don't pay anyone a salary. That hardly
counts as profitable. How can the service grow?

~~~
ry0ohki
When I was bootstrapping my startup while working a day job, I used to wonder
how to answer that question. My product was bringing in more money then the
company's costs, so it felt "profitable", yet not enough to employ me full-
time. Seems like there is a difference between that and something that is just
plain unprofitable (where the burn rate will eventually cause the bank account
to go to zero).

~~~
superqd
The software doesn't write and maintain itself. So if the revenue can't cover
the expense to write/maintain the codebase (i.e., dev salaries), then the app
isn't profitable because one of the major costs can't be met out of revenue at
100%.

------
robot
I think there is a simple reason why app.net did not take off: There was no
significant differentiation from twitter other than paid / no ads argument.

~~~
rossk
Half true: _alpha_ is the Twitter clone, but in theory, that's just one app of
many built on the API. The many just never happened.

~~~
jmathai
You could almost say the same thing about Twitter. Their web and mobile apps
are just one of many apps built on their API.

~~~
dasil003
Indeed many people including Dalton were saying that from 2007-2011ish when
the Twitter API was wide open and speculation about it's potential as plumbing
ran rampant. However over the last few years, it became increasing clear that
the contingent of people inside Twitter who saw it as new and amazing plumbing
for the next generation of applications were losing, and the contingent who
saw Twitter as a media company selling advertising with a fully controller and
branded user experience were the ones who won out.

Anyone building an app on top of Twitter for anything other than personal or
experimental use is a fool. Unfortunately for anyone building on top of
App.net, it doesn't have the users to make it broadly interesting or
significantly profitable.

------
7cupsoftea
This post is a stark reminder that startups are extremely challenging. There
are many elements and, often times, a good bit of luck needed for big success,
especially when you are doing something novel
([http://mariocaropreso.com/post/62811446044/nonlinearities-
an...](http://mariocaropreso.com/post/62811446044/nonlinearities-and-
success)).

Nassim Taleb talks about entrepreneurs as people who should be championed when
they fail. They take on projects with very long odds. It is a tough life with
little upside if you don't make it big. These entrepreneurs teach us a lot. We
all get to learn from the path they traveled down. Dalton tried something new
and it didn't work out as planned. Someone else will build on what he started
and we'll all be better for it. Failure is part of our ecosystem. These
situations are good reminders that those that make it big have learned from
others and have often had a few lucky breaks to help them out.

------
thu
I think everyone remembers Alpha, the Twitter clone. But there was also Backer
([https://backer.app.net/](https://backer.app.net/)). I looked at it a few
weeks ago and I didn't understand why there was no list of currently active
Backers. Actually I always been very curious about the future of App.net,
especially beside the Twitter clone as I never fully grasped what you could do
with it "as a platform".

~~~
eridius
There's 3 Backers going on right now. A poster, a shirt, and an iOS app.
They're listed on the page you linked to.

~~~
thu
Oh thanks, I didn't understood it was the list itself. When I looked at that
page before, I googled a bit to see past projects and it seemed the only one I
could find was the one already on that page.

------
nivertech
Usually platforms built around some useful service or product.

For example Apple built a platform for iOS devices, Microsoft for Windows OS,
Facebook Platform for Facebook social network, Amazon for AWS, Google for
Android, ChromeOS and Cloud Platform, etc.

App.net did it in reverse, they built a platform and hoped that useful
products and services will be built on it.

I think they had better chances if they were white-labeled Social
PaaS/BaaS/mBaaS completely hidden from the end-users. App developers would be
paying for the BaaS Platform, not their app's end-users.

~~~
kenrikm
The idea was to be Basically.. Parse, but where the users keep shared accounts
across all apps and services.

The underlying idea is good but the executions and message were lost in
TERRIBLE, TERRIBLE marketing. No one knew what it was other then, "that
twitter knockoff site you have to pay for".

------
joewee
I signed up for app.net when it first offered the paid option and was billed
for the renewal, but honestly I haven't touched the site in a year. I just
forgot to cancel my subscription. I really want to support it but I have no
reason to engage with it.

I'm willing to support the company, so I can't understand why they don't pivot
to something people are happy to pay for? I might even pay for a light social
media dashboard. No reason to wind down in my opinion...

~~~
jmathai
Not enough people willing to pay to pivot to something people are (possibly)
happy to pay for. That's what App.net was. It had good signs of support at the
start and they dove in head first -- I think a wise decision.

The odds were against them; as they are with all startups. This just happens
to be _their_ day of reckoning.

------
DigitalSea
I feel as though App.net's day has come and gone sadly. I had high hopes for
the platform, but I think it started off on the wrong foot, coming across as a
clone of Twitter instead of what they really wanted to be. My understanding
based on my Twitter feed alone is that many forgot to turn off auto-renew in
their App.net accounts, many of the renewals were unintentional.

I think this could be the last year we see App.net as we all know it, unless
they can pull off something magical. I personally think they should open
source the code and pivot to a support model, try and move into the enterprise
somehow, but that could all just be wishful thinking.

I alone wanted to see App.net succeed, but it just didn't get the traction it
needed and the high price-point was a deterring factor for many developers to
join. If they lowered the price to $50 or heck even $20 (which seems quite
low) they would have had way more signups and I would have been more inclined
to give it a longer chance/keep paying.

I always felt as though App.net was an RSS reader for consuming API's. A place
where you could feed in your Facebook feed, Twitter, email and more. Sadly,
the public mostly saw it as a paid Twitter alternative without the
advertisements.

------
programminggeek
This is one more indictment to the idea that you can build a profitable
business on consumer apps without just slapping on ads and then the revenues
are so low per user that unless you have millions of users, it's probably not
going to support much of a business.

~~~
beaumartinez
The problem with App.net was that it offered nothing new. It was an
alternative to existing free, established products—Twitter (and, to an extent,
Google+ and Facebook).

------
jimmytidey
For me pieces of infrastructure like Twitter shouldn't be owned by for profit
companies. A Twitter-like public forum ought to be the town square of the web,
and it should run along the same lines as Wikipedia. The data should be ours
to do as we please with, there should be no purchasing access through adverts.
App.net, and the insanely confusing concept of the Alpha app within it, might
not have been the right solution, but they were asking the right question.

~~~
ForHackernews
We need protocols, not platforms. Unfortunately, it's 2014, and protocols are
not sexy.

~~~
drpancake
Unless you count the wave of innovation coming out of cryptocurrencies, which
are really just protocols for managing a blockchain. A decentralised Twitter
could theoretically be built with this model.

~~~
__david__
Isn't a decentralized twitter just email?

~~~
fzltrp
...With the exception that everyone can read every emails (or is there a
private tweet feature with twitter?).

------
X-Istence
I didn't renew my App.net subscription, there really was no value for me.
Checking it along with Twitter got tiresome (I was hoping someone would
integrate the two into a single client) and overall everyone I care to follow
is on Twitter, it was difficult to get people interested and on the App.net
bandwagon.

~~~
eridius
> I was hoping someone would integrate the two into a single client

My belief is that Twitter's rules prohibited doing precisely that. There are
multiple developers that expressed an interest in creating a single app for
viewing both, but never did so because Twitter would have revoked their API
token.

------
carrotleads
I concur with the point that they did not differentiate enough with their free
competitors.

I remember being thrilled when I read Dalton initial essay on the topic and
did register an account but a free one.

One reason why they failed was to reduce the barriers of entry for new users.
Joel had a article[1] on in Yr2000 on the levels Microsoft went to convert
users from Lotus 123.

My guess is Dalton and Co failed to think on these lines

[1]
[http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000052.html](http://www.joelonsoftware.com/articles/fog0000000052.html)

------
jcomis
ugh, tried to turn off auto-renewal only to find out you can't. Downgrading is
the only option, and it is immediate rather than at the end of the period I
already paid for. That's annoying.

------
SmileyKeith
As a developer on the platform who relied on the developer incentive program
this is extremely disappointing. Like many other developers using ADN as a
backend I relied on that to make my application free and got a small amount of
money each month if people voted for it with the program. It wasn't a
significant amount of money but it was enough to pay for my developer
membership. Now I imagine even fewer users will be on the service and I have
very little incentive to keep improving the application.

~~~
loceng
What were you developing for them?

~~~
SmileyKeith
Just a small client for distraction free posting.
[http://sailforapp.net/](http://sailforapp.net/)

~~~
loceng
How much did you earn or receive from App.net's developer program to create
and maintain it? It's not a free app though right?

------
jaxomlotus
It was a really hard business model to support and get to work. You are paying
for the forward belief that the network itself will be strong enough to
ultimately justify the costs, but over time if that belief isn't met (and it
wasn't) then you will lose subscribers.

I give Dalton and Brian kudos for trying. Ultimately I think the lesson here
is users simply aren't offended enough by ads that they would be willing to
pay a subscription service to avoid them.

~~~
auxbuss
I believe that users are sufficiently offended by ads to pay to avoid them,
but clearly and provably not the price that app.net charged.

I believe there's more to it than that, but the price being too high was a
major contributor.

~~~
jkrems
I'm not even sure the dollar price was the issue. But I would have to rebuild
things like "people to follow", get used to the new interface, have the risk
that the platform doesn't survive - a lot of implicit costs. What could be
working is to offer a paid tier for an already existing service like Twitter -
but unfortunately they have a strong incentive not to. Because it would mean
that their ads would stop reaching the very people that the advertisers are
interested in - the ones who are willing to spend money.

------
frade33
at the risk of being stupid, which I am, 'aint they beating the dead horse'
i'd love someone to enlighten me, if it was really worth it and why?

They tried hard to build an 'elite' club of rich twitter users, and it wasn't
clearly going to work. Because rich people can not listen to each other.

PS: i happen to be rich twitter user myself haha! i did pay them $29 and spent
like a week there and quitted., because no one'd listen to me. ;)

~~~
niketdesai
I don't recall it being pitched as Twitter, or even Alpha at the time.

I had read a lot about what Dalton believed and agreed with him. My $29 seemed
paltry in the long view if he would succeed.

I'm saddened by the current state of affairs. But I am glad I helped give him
a shot at something I was unable or otherwise unwilling to attempt.

~~~
smcl
Perhaps its true purpose wasn't pitched strongly enough. My impression as a HN
regular was that it was indeed just a paid twitter, and as such I paid it no
mind.

------
mergy
I really enjoyed ADN for quite a while. I do think though that recently there
were some opportunities to make a shift to provide more visible and direct
value for users if they clarified to the outside world they had many different
uses.

I could've seen them go down more of a road like Zoho.

[https://www.zoho.com/](https://www.zoho.com/)

and really be outright focusing on an application or conduit infrastructure.

------
superqd
It makes no sense to say the renewal rate was high enough to remain profitable
and self-sustaining, but you can't retain any of your employees. It sounds to
me like they didn't have enough renewals to remain profitable and self-
sustaining at their current burn rate, and decided to reduce the burn rate
significantly in order to remain in existence. Overall, that's bad news, not
good.

------
sylvinus
As discussed more than 1 year ago
([https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4346303](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4346303)),
the (very) hard times they had signing people up, with constant posts on HN
without much effect, should have been a strong indicator people didn't
actually need this.

~~~
windsurfer
I think PG's comment in that same thread is spot on, now that I understand
what app.net is:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4346470](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4346470)

~~~
bibinou
that is not pg.

~~~
windsurfer
Oh. Oops.

------
tlogan
Sad news for App.net :( Unfortunately, I never understood what is/was the
point App.net. Somebody did ask that once on Hacker News but the best answer
was "it was kinda RSS feed but they now changed focus so they lost me".

~~~
eridius
Fundamentally, App.Net is a platform that provides a number of services,
including Twitter-like one-to-many messaging, private one-to-one and one-to-
many messaging (like Twitter DM on steroids), many-to-many messaging (like IRC
chatrooms), file hosting, and some less-obvious features like messages
generated by and for machine consumption (that are never seen by humans), etc.

These are the nuts and bolts that can be used to build a Twitter clone (which
App.Net did and which is the primary "product" that most of their users used),
a Dropplr clone, blogging a la Octopress, personal memory logs (like Ohai[1]),
Photo story sharing apps like Sunlit[2], etc.

[1]: [http://ohaiapp.net](http://ohaiapp.net)

[2]: [http://sunlit.io](http://sunlit.io)

Heck, you could even use this to build a Chess app that lets you play remotely
with other players, that automatically records every move ever made, and that
lets you access your games and history from any device. Basically, anything
that involves sending messages (of up to 2k, plus various bits of metadata)
between two or more parties and persisting them could leverage App.Net to
power itself.

Of course, that's part of the problem. They positioned themselves as a
platform, which meant they didn't market themselves very well to end users.

------
bobbles
I signed up at the start, was excited for it.. but even after a few months all
that was really going on there were people posting about how awesome we all
were for being on app.net, nothing of substance

------
rajbala
The big lesson learned here: don't pay a high cost to only operate at the
margin.

That's what App.net did --- they built out a complete product offering to only
be marginally different from the alternatives.

------
loceng
It was Andreessen Horowitz who put money into App.net right? They're investors
in Facebook though, so isn't there a conflict of interest? Anyone know why
they'd invest in App.net?

------
kirbyk
Did this surprise anyone?

~~~
dublinben
Not me. When even Leo Laporte abandons your service, you've truly failed to
gain tractions.

[https://alpha.app.net/leolaporte](https://alpha.app.net/leolaporte)

~~~
jccalhoun
Leo jumps on whatever is new and then as soon as his attention is distracted
he moves on to something else. The list of things that he as said he "loved"
and then never mentioned again would be endless...

~~~
dublinben
I completely agree. However, he's still posting on Twitter every day, as far
as I can tell. He regularly posts on Google+, even now. It says something if
the social butterfly of the tech world has abandoned your service.

------
thrillgore
That's a very creative way of saying that you don't have a profitable service.

------
EGreg
They raised $800k! Come on?

------
moeedm
I give it 6 months.

------
papaver
your code is shite... ever head of commenting?

------
mantrax5
Remember rev="canonical"? It was to save us from the tyranny of bit.ly and co.
Geeks rallied behind it.

Remember Open ID? It was to save us from the tyranny of Passport.NET and co.
Geeks rallied behind it.

Remember Diaspora? It was to save us from the tyranny of Facebook. Geeks
rallied behind it.

Remember App.net...?

The history of geeky "open" (or ad-free or whatever) alternatives to
commercial social media services is littered with corpses. What geeks never
learn is that social media services can't survive if the only appeal of the
service is some righteous motivation that only they care about.

Sooner or later even geeks realize that using a "better" service to talk to
nobody isn't very useful.

I know it seems easy to be Captain Obvious now that App.net is falling apart,
but just you watch. Soon enough it'll happen again (and then again, and
again).

~~~
filmgirlcw
And before App.net, there was Identi.ca.

What is disappointing about App.net was that it had the potential to be a set
of pipes and a broader infrastructure rather than being simply yet another
social network. And that's what my true hope for App.net was.

~~~
mantrax5
Marketing is a huge part of the success of a new paradigm. App.net was
"marketed" with a practically blank home page ("one login many applications"
\- _which_ applications?), and a nondescript niche Twitter clone on one of its
subdomains.

It had no chance at all. Where was the evangelism? Where were the
presentations, demos, and the _other_ useful apps built on this platform?

I'm a developer and I did hear about App.net when the buzz was at its peak. I
remember going to their home page and wondering "wtf is this?", then checking
alpha.app.net on a couple of occasions, finding nothing of interest and that's
it.

That wonderful arrogance that the world will care about your project because
you're somehow "right" has killed many tech efforts and will kill a lot to
come yet.

~~~
oddevan
This. So much of this.

I see real value in using App.net as an identity provider so that I'm not
relying on something shaky like Twitter or Facebook but I can still get the
benefits that come with an external provider (lower signup friction, 2-factor
auth for users that want it, less overall damage if site is hacked). But (a)
their marketing is so weird that I don't really know that I can do that, and
(b) their onboarding for end users sucks, so I'm losing people telling them to
sign up through them.

------
yung_ether
Dalton is a big failure.. Again!

