

First screenshots of App.net - MatthewPhillips
http://dribbble.com/ianmintz

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karpathy
Since you're just starting, can you maybe go beyond what Twitter does in some
obvious ways? We've learned a lot about social media in the last few years and
you're still agile enough to incorporate all the lessons and make things
significantly better.

As an example, my biggest issue with Twitter is the noise, which mostly stems
from a single issue: people I follow don't only share interesting things, but
they also share a lot of irrelevant stuff such as pictures from family hike.
I'm sure this is interesting to some of their personal friends, but not to me.
I want to subscribe to that person on a "coding" stream, and leave the
"personal" stream alone. People are multi-dimensional beings with many
orthogonal interests; Consider giving them multiple stdouts.

Also, I have to say, 140 is often too little :) Will you also force me to
write up the occasional longer post on Google+ and then link to it?

This looks nice, I just hope you won't be a Twitter bare bones re-
implementation that I have to pay for. Ideology gives you many points, but I'm
not certain about just to what degree a sponsored tweet here and there really
bothers me.

~~~
pooriaazimi
As someone who doesn't use Facebook, Twitter, G+ or other crazy social
networks, I must say that for the first time I can see myself using a social
network _if_ it was like what you described (i.e. multiple streams).

Though, in practice I don't think it would be as successful as you (and maybe
I) hope. People who use twitter want to say something and they want to say it
fast; they don't want to stop and think "is what I'm sharing ( _for example,
iOS 6 download links when it comes out_ ) code related, or related to Apple,
or work?"...

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streptomycin
If I made a Twitter clone with a Bootstrap UI, I don't think I could generate
much buzz. Kudos to these folks, I suppose.

~~~
wmf
This seems almost too obvious to mention, but they generated buzz based on
their differentiator (business model) before showing any hint of the UI.

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norviller
I know it is very, very early, but I would have expected more than slightly
above Twitter Bootstrap...

~~~
mikegreenspan
These are only the first screenshots of the UI built on the API to show this
isn't vaporware. You should follow that dribbble account, because there is
much more to come!

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cmcewen
It's awesome that App.net is trying to build something new, but I think the
Hacker News market is somewhat saturated considering how many articles have
been on the front page lately. If people haven't donated by now, I don't think
a few screenshots will sway their opinion that much. I'd guess that turning
your effort towards other avenues would be a better use of time.

~~~
ghshephard
First I'd ever heard of App.net was Siracusa's "Hypercritical" podcast last
night. This post on HN reminded me to check it out. I added my support. Just
wish someone would do something like this for Path (and all the other web
services that I love, but don't want to become the "product")

It's times like this that I realize how much I take HN for granted. Great
service. No Ads. Fantastic Community.

~~~
jyap
Hacker News is an ad for Y Combinator.

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detay
I'm sorry but either you see your project more important than it is, or you
don't know how to present it. (I think both is true.)

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ars_nihili
I understand the problems Twitter poses, but what's the problem with Identica?

~~~
davidcollantes
I have found Identica (Status.NET) to be very slow. Other than that, I dislike
the UI.

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yuchi
I'm sure I'll sound horribly impolite, but why did you choose such an Apple-
esque style?

You all could be a revolutionary team, but as far as I can see the UI is not a
revolution at all. I'm not telling you that a drastically innovative interface
is needed, but to be future-proof you should go fully-digital, if not
something farther.

The interface must be perfect, cool, useful, built tightly around the user and
functions, not _nice_.

~~~
mikegreenspan
Thanks for the feedback. I know I probably sound redundant at this point, but
we are still very early in the development this product. These screenshots are
meant to show a working prototype built on our API and also to spark your
imagination!

~~~
yuchi
@comex for example expressed his likes about the UI, do not take my opinions
as simple critics about the style. But looks like an UI that every UI designer
could come up to. Well, it's pretty and curated. Thinking about it you have to
account for customers/users with strong expectation from such a service, it's
not that stupid to go for the well-trodden path.

I hope you're not going to be flooded by a too common design...

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therealarmen
Wow. The fact that some teaser screenshots are getting so much attention is
great news for App.net.

Honestly I wasn't sure about Dalton's prospects at first -- but with the
developer community hanging on to his every word, he might have a shot.

I still remember the days when Twitter was just a bunch of geeks tweeting
about how much they hated MySpace. Now they can update their App.net statuses
about how much they hate Facebook.

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vineet
Looks pretty.

I definitely want to support entrepreneurs and App.net. But, quite frankly I
don't see how they are going to build a user base.

~~~
mikegreenspan
That's the beauty of how we are going about this. If our campaign succeeds,
there will be at least 9,999 like-minded individuals with you on day one!

~~~
vineet
I do want to support you guys.

But just having 10K people who want App.net successful is not enough to get me
to put in $50 (or to even try it out for free).

Now, if this a community of a 100 entrepreneurs, I might be more interested.
Perhaps, you guys need channels for various groups or something.

My point is that I cannot yet find an excuse to see why you will be successful
and therefore would want to bet anything on you. Help me find that excuse :-)

~~~
mikegreenspan
I understand your uncertainty, however I encourage you to search twitter for
people who have pledged their support (we have highlighted a handful on
join.app.net). I think you'll be pleasantly surprised!

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nbertram
_Builds twitter clone... uses twitter bootstrap_

~~~
hhaidar
Now that's #ironic

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zacharyvoase
Is this a screenshot of a Photoshop mockup, static HTML + CSS, or a live app
running on a server somewhere?

~~~
mikegreenspan
The screenshots are of a live app built on our API.

~~~
zacharyvoase
Cool :)

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arthurbrown
It seems like the name of this project alone is enough to guarantee traction
problems. Having a searchable name these days counts for more than having a
name that is clever, short, appealing, or anything else.

~~~
Raphael
status.net has the perfect name, yet little traction.

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spullara
Why don't they just build on <http://status.net>? Hasn't this all been done
before? <http://identi.ca>

~~~
AznHisoka
because they have an ego, and want to take credit and praise for creating it.
They dun care if the idea becomes a reality without them being involved.

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mnicole
What happened to the clean branding that the current splash/Kickstarter
campaign page have? The textures here are really distracting, even in 400x300.

~~~
mikegreenspan
Thanks for the feedback. The app is nowhere near finished, but we just wanted
to post initial screenshots of a live app built on our API.

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sakopov
Am i looking at a twitter clone running stock version of twitter bootstrap? A
bit ironic.

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peterwiese
I think that whatever comes out of this campaign (i.e. certain failure), the
team of app.net should continue developing this service bc the need for it
will emerge one day in the future. It's just that right now, this point hasn't
been reached yet. But being able to move first when the time has come is a
good thing. Right now they should, instead of associating this project with
failure, provide the service for free but be clear about the fact that they
will start charging for it at some point in the future. Or maybe offer a free
and a paid plan with the former being limited in possible API calls.

