
App.net’s new direction - brianwillis
http://www.marco.org/2013/02/25/adn-freemium
======
brianwillis
_The first wave of accounts is up for renewal on April 14 — just seven weeks
from now. So App.net has seven weeks to convince its early adopters that it’s
worth paying more money for another year of service._

I'm pretty sure this is incorrect. Those of us that signed up for the $50/year
deal got our subscriptions extended when the price dropped to $36. My renewal
date is April 9th 2014 (i.e. more than a year away).

Setting aside that piece of nit picking, Marco's completely right that in
order for App.net to be useful to both end users and developers it first needs
to be popular. It's a chicken and egg problem in some ways (no users without
interesting apps, no interesting apps without a lot of users). Opening the
doors with invite-only free accounts goes some of the way towards solving that
problem without the scaling issues that would come with unrestricted free
accounts.

~~~
mbreese
FYI - He corrected the original post to mark the correct date.

I think that the chicken and egg problem may be a little more fundamental. The
major social networks (Twitter/Facebook) first had a compelling application
and then later migrated to try to be more like platforms. App.net is trying to
be a platform first, without providing a compelling application first. They
need at least one killer app to convince people to sign up, and that is what
they should be pushing to end-users.

They can push the File API/platform to devs at the same time, but who is their
real customer? The end user or the developer? It's hard to figure out.

~~~
fusiongyro
Who is the real customer on Twitter? Users who follow celebrities or
celebrities who post?

~~~
chaz
Both. It's a marketplace for real-time information, and any marketplace always
has both buyers and sellers. This is especially important for Twitter, as each
person can frequently swap roles.

~~~
fusiongyro
Right. And that's why it's not confusing or complicated for App.net to target
both users and developers. Both are their "real customers."

------
guelo
I wish there was more interest in developing on top of the tent.io protocol.
Open and distributed should be the goal for the next phase of social networks.

~~~
graue
Tent.io introduced a few cool ideas, so I'm glad it's part of the
conversation, but it's definitely not the answer.

The developers behind it have a weird preoccupation with preserving _all_ your
content forever. For example, if you edit your Tent profile, people can still
get all the old versions and see info that you deleted. And last time I
checked, not only was this the default behavior, there was no way to opt out
of it, either. And they claim this is a feature but nobody I have talked to
wants it.

I also followed the Tent software's development for several months (initially
I was extremely excited about the project). It broke frequently and progress
on making it do what it was supposed to was slow. Plenty of features were
promised ("we'll implement X next week") but never delivered even after
months.

I don't think the developers really understand the problems social software
solves, nor do they have a clear idea what their own project does and doesn't
do (they seem to think _everything_ should be a Tent.io app, which is crazy),
nor are they particularly good at shipping. I've moved on, personally.

~~~
johnmw
Do you know much about pump.io, which looks like it is the replacement for
status.net?

~~~
graue
Not familiar, sorry.

------
jayfuerstenberg
Also app.net's $100/yr developer account is perhaps not the best way to
attract developers to the platform.

Our apps, whether they are dedicated app.net clients like Netbot or just apps
that let you post content to a user's app.net account, add to the network
effect that can help app.net grow.

Developers should be allowed to build against the platform at the same price
as regular people pay to become members in my opinion.

I'll be watching app.net and seeing if they change their stance on this in the
near future.

~~~
eridius
App.Net is literally paying their developers money, though. If you build a
useful tool, you get money directly from ADN. I don't see why paying for
access to the API and, more importantly, support, is a problem.

~~~
mbreese
Apple charges $99/year for their iOS or Mac appstores, which has a far greater
reach. So perhaps they've set their price too high.

~~~
soup10
The $99/year is mostly just away to filter out some of the noise from their
review queue and tech support I think. I don't think the revenue from it
matters at all to apple.(i'm sure if they thought they could get more quality
apps by dropping the subscription, they would. You can still dabble with iOS
development without the subscription.

~~~
jayfuerstenberg
I don't mind paying -some- price and I gladly fork over money for a good
product or service. I bought Coda for $99, and MarsEdit for ~$40 and countless
other great software.

However, paying $99 for the right just to develop against an API so I can add
it as an option for an app I'm making doesn't compute for me.

I'd probably not use the service enough as a regular user to warrant it
either.

------
jacques_chester
I think the problem is possibly that most people don't want to pay to get into
a silo when there are so many free silos to choose from.

~~~
SCdF
It's certainly why I haven't touched it. I suppose not having ads is nice, but
it still seems to have the same fundamental problems that FB/Twitter/G+/et al
have.

I really want something like tent.io to succeed (and when my time frees up
shortly I'm considering playing around in that space) but I don't quite think
anyone's figured out how to make these open frameworks be as user friendly and
seemless as these convenient friendly silos.

App.net seems like the answer to a question, just not a question many people
are asking.

~~~
jacques_chester
Which worries me, I have a different business model with a similar problem:
getting pay people to pay to use stuff that they can sorta-kinda use for free.

~~~
SCdF
As do I. Well. As _did_ I.

I've pretty much canned the idea at this stage, because I'd love to build this
thing, but the three funding options seem to be angel, subscriptions or ads.
The first and third make me behooven to someone else; the third would also
require (if I wanted to do it right) writing a ad-engine backend and actually
hiring people to source ads and crap like that.

Subs _would_ be awesome, but since my app neither makes you money or gets you
laid I don't see anyone paying for it.

~~~
jacques_chester
When I get my stuff cooking, I'll be able to help people just like you.

All I need is zillions of dollars and for a 30 month patent process to run a
smidge faster.

------
vxNsr
I just don't think anyone wants yet another social network, with twitter,
facebook (and google+ muscling its way in) no one is looking for another way
to contact old friends or meet new ones... especially not at $36/year, as we
saw with Instagram most people don't care about privacy or ownership, if you
have a compelling product as long as it's free you'll get users no matter what
your privacy policies are.

~~~
fusiongyro
App.net is really an experiment to find out if this hypothesis true, or if
there can be a viable business model selling to people who do care. Marco
doesn't need everybody to sign up if he can reach profitability in the margin
between the "most people" who don't care and the handful left over that do.

~~~
vxNsr
Great explanation, I guess it's similar to the Orabrush, even though most
people don't care they realized that over 20 million would buy such a
product,which is a large audience...

I'm so used to the boom or bust model, especially when it comes to SocN that
it never occurred to me that they'd be okay with niche

------
shurcooL
I really wonder what the true costs of running/maintaining a Twitter-clone per
user would be. Is it anywhere close to a few dollars per month per user?

To me, it feels like it should be a tiny fraction of that, but perhaps my
judgement is off?

I mean, compared to say youtube, you have to deal with short strings of
text...

~~~
wmf
Keep in mind that in a freemium app each paid user needs to pay for ~20 free
users. So yeah, it should be on the order of 10 cents/user/month.

~~~
shurcooL
That's true.

But if it were cheaper, wouldn't a lot more people be able to sign up too? At
$5/month, it's almost what you pay for Netflix. It's probably more than most
people pay for their bank accounts.

~~~
uptown
They might be able to sign up if it was cheaper - but it doesn't mean they
would. Cheaper isn't always "enough".

------
rgbrgb
I'm personally really excited to get an invite! I think that invite systems
are a great way of doing a controlled rollout while building hype.

I think we're about to see a new generation of apps that take advantage of
user-owned file storage. For years, native apps have stored all of their data
on hardware users own. Now that everyone basically has some kind of always-on
file server, I think we'll be able to do similar architectures in the cloud.
Imagine if we built the next Instagram by storing all the photos entirely in
the user's Dropbox and just have a heavy caching layer on ec2. I'm working on
a platform right now that should make building this kind of app pretty easy.

I think there's room for all of the competitors in the space to benefit from
this paradigm shift.

~~~
pseut
I mean, I was excited to get an invite to google wave. Then I couldn't figure
out what to use it for, didn't have any friends using it, etc... which has
been my experience with app.net so far as well.

I find it a little ironic that you view dropbox as "user owned file storage."
I don't have a dropbox account and don't want one. I'm happy to pay for (and I
do pay for) a separate service that gives me webdav file access, but it seems
like it's less and less common for programs/apps to support that. (please
support that in your platform!)

~~~
rgbrgb
I feel like I own my storage on Dropbox to about the same extent that I own it
on S3. Do you not feel like you own cloud storage? Is it because we're just
renters? I'm really quite curious what you find ironic.

~~~
pseut
A big part of "ownership" for me is the ability to replace the service with my
own machine, whether I actually do that or not. So (for example) I'd have less
ownership over the gmail account <whomever@gmail.com> than one with a custom
domain, even if I chose to forward everything to gmail or use google apps. I
haven't looked into it at all, but my understanding is that it would be hard
or impossible to point applications to a self-hosted dropbox replacement;
compare that to, for example, github where I could replace it if I wanted to
fairly easily (at least for the small, personal projects I keep there; this
probably becomes less true for larger projects, so take it as an example of my
thought process rather than a statement about the "ownership" of data on
github).

------
fumar
I just cancelled my APP.net account two weeks ago. I tried the service for
over six months. I was paying monthly.

At first, I enjoyed the service. But, I gradually stopped participating.
Perhaps it was the lack of new people to follow. I might retry again, if more
people use the service.

------
bobsy
The best direction for App.net would be to make developer accounts free.

You are building a platform, you want lots of apps. It doesn't make sense to
charge developers $100/year. These are the people who are going to innovate on
your platform. These are the people who will make your platform more visible
by integrating it into various services.

The company I work for has Facebook / Twitter sign up. I use app.net and I
would add a signup option to our website if I did not have to pay $100/yr to
do it. Not when perhaps a handful of people will use it and I will see no
return on this $64 additional investment.

~~~
lemcoe9
I agree with this. I should not have to pay $100 to have the right to develop
on their platform.

------
imaginator
I've been pinging users on buddycloud, about why they signed up. Main reasons:
they _don't_ want another silo / want data portability and they like the idea
of beign outside a company controlling their social networking experience

Of couse I'm biased, but permit me to dream: it would be great if App.net
would consider building on an open and distributed/federated design like tent,
status.net or buddycloud. The App.net guys seem great at design and building
an ecosystem and the syngergies would be a really interesting alternative to
Twitter/FB.

------
philip1209
I would like an invitation too, but rather than have a hundred comments like
this I made a google doc to consolidate them:

[https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JrOted0DLopZzwPO0aymRLfT...](https://docs.google.com/document/d/1JrOted0DLopZzwPO0aymRLfTd2SnYNGzSQRejrlt6xY/edit)

Just post your email there if you want one, then delete someone's email if you
sent them an invite.

(Mods - this strikes me as more organized, but you can remove it if you don't
approve)

Thanks in advance!

------
dinkumthinkum
I like everyone else was curious when App.net was first announcing this pay-
for-Twitter clone awhile back. But I admit I didn't really "get it;" I thought
the idea of a Twitter that's not Twitter was possibly a very interesting idea.
But I always thought the idea of it being more a platform seemed to not make
much sense.

Now, I have to say, I _really_ don't get it at all anymore. What it is thing
about now?

------
jemeshsu
I actually thought alpha, the name chosen for the app you see on app.net
website, an alpha release of app.net, a Twitter clone. And I thought app.net
was a bad name for a Twitter clone, until I realize they are trying to build
an app platform.

~~~
cpressey
I had a really hard time figuring out their value proposition, too. In fact
I'm still not exactly sure what it is. I've given up and moved on.

------
jgannonjr
I'd love an invite if anyone has an extra! Email me if you can!

In exchange, I'll buy you a beer (or coffee) if you are ever in LA. Or if you
are in SF I will be there next weekend, and I'll be you a beer (or coffee)
then if you'd like!

~~~
citricsquid
Sent. Give the coffee to a homeless guy.

~~~
jgannonjr
Thanks! Will do :)

------
RileyJames
Does anyone have a rough idea how many users are currently on app.net?
Considering the audience is primarily developers and technologist I thought
there would be some applications (particularly in the startup community) that
could use it as an effective use acquisition channel. But it really depends on
how many users there are, 5,000? 50,000? 100,000? more? I'd be interested to
know.

~~~
fields
There are over 40k users as of today.

------
ricardobeat
I think app.net should be working on getting actual implementations of their
file API out there (Instagram, every photo editing app, etc), yet that's
_another_ chicken-and-egg problem: what company will encourage their own users
to rely on an unknown third-party service?

This sounds like a problem that can be fixed by throwing lots of money at it,
but that doesn't fit their business model...

------
fiendsan
yeah no point! at this point its kinda mute... to be useful you need to have
your friends in it! and the way its setup its not easy or user friendly to
have people join, something like gmail gained traction with invite only
because gmail is useful by itself you dont need anyone else using it to make
it more useful, at this point it really doesnt matter if its dev friendly...
twitter might suck right now for any dev, but app.net limited scope puts it in
competition with way more tools than just twitter and facebook's of the world,
if you are this limited, you might prefer to go use something like tumblr or
do it yourself with your own hosting, why use app.net?

------
623132
Does anyone else have an extra invite for this platform? I'm unfortunately a
little late to the party but I'd love to check this thing out! Thanks in
advance, I'll do what I can in exchange to help you back.

Email: 6231.32@gmail.com

~~~
csomar
I'm also interested in an invite (saas(at)omarabid.com)

Thanks!

~~~
pseut
sure

------
stesch
If they want users, why not more payment methods?

I really don't want to enter my credit card information on the page of a
startup.

But now it seems to be a little too late. Good night, sweet service.

------
dylanhassinger
App.net was an interesting attempt at taking on Twitter, but failed.

However there is a real challenger waiting in the wings. Its name is Buffer.

~~~
fields
Elaborate?

------
eb817
If anyone has an extra invite, can you please send me one at
duncallmeeel@gmail.com. Thank you~

------
account_taken
So I don't get it. The crowd funded this project and the crowd has to pay to
use it?

~~~
bti
The initial funding came from people buying a year's subscription. Once the
initial subscription is over, they will have to choose whether or not to
continue paying.

------
rip747
maybe i'm just not `getting it`, but what benefits does the app.net platform
offer _exactly_ for developers? I could be wrong, but usually when services go
from paid to free, its a sign.

------
rjawahar
Switch to Buddycloud the true free social networking platform
<http://buddycloud.com/>

------
harsain
can anyone invite me hskoder@gmail.com will be highly obliged

------
camus
Allright , i'm a user , what does App.net have that twitter or facebook dont ?
why should i use it ? instead of non-paying social networks?

~~~
fusiongyro
I feel like this gets gone over every time App.net is brought up. The value
proposition is that rather than trading your privacy and your attention for a
free service you'd rather pay and retain ownership. For developers, the value
proposition is that you have a service you can treat more like a public
utility than like a private company's secret API that they could revoke access
from on a whim. Eventually, if the second part works out, there will be
applications that only work on App.net and they will also become part of the
value proposition for end users.

~~~
macspoofing
>The value proposition is that rather than trading your privacy and your
attention for a free service you'd rather pay and retain ownership.

If that's the value proposition, than it's a terrible one. There is nothing
inherently different about App.net that would protect your privacy or
guarantee you ownership (of your tweets?). They can try and argue that
position while they are tiny and inconsequential but it will ring hollow once
(if) they get big.

I think there's potential in a service like App.net, especially if they cater
to their audience (developers and start up culture in general) and are willing
to go for a steady organic growth. Developers are a great group to target
because they are fashionistas and they love to tie themselves to services that
increase their 'street cred'. Now that GitHub is mainstream, the time is right
for 'the next thing'. If App.net tries to be Twitter with a better EULA they
will fail.

I've been sitting on the sidelines and looking at App.net, and never pulled
the trigger on a subscription, but I may check them out now with an invite. I
really hope they do well. There's potential.

~~~
fusiongyro
> There is nothing inherently different about App.net that would protect your
> privacy or guarantee you ownership

The concept here is that by making their money from the users directly they
align the users' interests with their own.

> it will ring hollow once (if) they get big

I suppose it's possible that they could decide they're not making enough money
and convert to an ad revenue model. The problem is that there is already an ad
supported service which is quite similar and free, so if they did that they
would essentially lose all their users instantly. They'd also be violating
their own core beliefs. I think they're a lot more likely to shut down the
service from lack of users than they are to "sell out" in this fashion. I
mean, there's nothing stopping Microsoft from shutting down the Windows
division and focusing on Office for Mac, except that it would completely
undermine their brand, and they make significant money from the Windows side.
It's the same situation here: switching to an ad model undermines their brand
and loses them their paying customers.

Besides that, Marco's goal is to achieve profitability with a small userbase.
I don't doubt that it's possible to do that, and it undermines the "they'll
screw you over when they get big" concept because they are not, like most
startups, trying to reach ridiculous scale before figuring out how to make
money, which seems to leave the ad model as the only possible option.

