
App.net 3rd-party revshare proposal - revorad
http://daltoncaldwell.com/3rd-party-rev-share
======
jenius
Sadly, this project is going to fail - it won't even be funded. I understand
the concept behind it, but for me app.net is like socialism - in theory it's
great but in reality it just won't work. App.net is not created based on what
people think and how they act, but rather on frustration with being a 3rd
party developer. Onboarding the developer community to this shouldn't be
difficult, and has already worked. But that's not what's important - what's
important is how it looks to some random person. Let's simulate.

\---------------------------------------------

'Hey, you should try app.net'

'Oh yeah? What is it?'

'It's the same thing as twitter, except you have to pay $50 to get on it, and
it's nowhere near as popular as twitter, yet. But it has no ads, and they
don't screw over third party devs.'

'Sounds questionable to me. I don't care about 3rd party developers, and not
having an occasional ad pop up in my stream is not worth $50 to me. Especially
if twitter is way more popular and useful anyway.'

'Well, shit.'

\---------------------------------------------

This is not going to take off with the support of the dev community alone - it
needs to appeal to normal people. And right now, everything about it does not.
The name, the website, the pitch, the fees - none of it makes any sense to
anyone but a dev.

~~~
dalton
Twitter in its early days made _zero_ sense to end-users, and it was only
through the effort of third party developers that it went mainstream.

I am getting tired of arguing with people about this. We will just have to
agree to disagree. I am willing to take the risk of failure because I saw this
exact developer-centric approach work before.

UPDATE: Regarding the comments below, if you read my original announcement
post, I made the point that this is architected by be financially sustainable
on a critical mass, small user-base: <http://daltoncaldwell.com/an-audacious-
proposal>

I cited this Paul Graham post discussing the strength of a core geeky
userbase: <http://paulgraham.com/ambitious.html>

Let's say that someone followed PGs advice on that proposal. Wouldn't the same
criticisms about not appealing to normies also apply?

~~~
enra
I think the OP means that it's not something non-developers want/care. Even if
twitter went mainstream with 3rd developers, it was still apparently something
people wanted.

PG also advices is that you should make things people want, people as users
who use the app. People don't care about the tech or how nice it's for
developers. If you build something that people like to use, and have nice API
terms, people will use it and developers will develop on top of it.

Probably the only reason why people would care is that the apps and the whole
network would be better, but that's huge chicken&egg problem.

If you look at the state on Windows Phone platform, Microsoft is even paying
to people to develop on it, but no-one still care's because there are no
users.

~~~
dalton
Twitter devs are being systematically intimidated, acquired and shutdown.
There are credible rumors that the most popular 3rd-party clients will be
summarily de-activated soon. What are they supposed to do now?

~~~
lazerwalker
People will complain, and the vast majority of Twitter users will continue to
use Twitter, albeit via first-party clients.

It sucks for third-party devs, and it sucks for us power Twitter users who
like our third-party clients, but look at every time Facebook introduces major
changes: people huff and puff about switching to something else (Google+,
etc), but the status quo doesn't actually change because the value is in the
relationships they've formed on the service, not the way they interface with
the service.

------
jazzychad
A friend recently asked me what it would take for me to go back to developing
on Twitter. I said, "Finally release the 3rd-party rev-share program they were
promising back in 2009." They will never do this now with their current
heading, but it would make a lot of sense. If they are becoming a media/ad
company, they need as much distribution as possible, so let the ads run free
outside their own walls.

For Twitter this would make a ton of sense because the rev-share would be
based on impressions of ads, clicks, etc. The method to determine the dev's
cut is straightforward and a known system (a la AdSense).

For App.net, as you correctly pointed out, the definition of "rev-share based
on usage" is insanely complicated and the maximum value per user per month is
capped at $2.08 (in the 50/50 scenario).

If I create a premium app.net client, would I still want to charge for it
(e.g. iphone app)... would I even be allowed to charge for it in accordance w/
app.net TOS?

The idea of no first-party apps competing for user revenue is the ultimate
dream of a platform that enables a 3rd party dev ecosystem. Sadly, many such
platforms that began with that promise ultimately went back on it, much to
devs' dismay. Much care would need to be taken to stick to this decision over
the long term if this is decided up front.

Aside: I'm peeved that Svbtle doesn't allow comments. All the feedback you get
must be out-of-band, and it creates extra steps for the people that read your
posts.

------
kyro
I can't help but feel that you're severely underestimating the network effects
and momentum needed to make a service like this useful to someone. If Twitter
had a price barrier, I doubt they'd have 5% of the user base that they do now.
I get where you're coming from, but at the end of the day, the cost of
scrolling through a Twitter/FB ad in my feed is far, far less than buying my
way into a social network that at least 90% of my friends won't use because of
the price alone.

Even if you get geeks on board as your early adopters, you're still going to
miss out on the much larger non-geek demographic that make these social
networks what they are, even to geeks. Remember, you're going for a social
tool here, and so you'll need to make it easy for a person's entire social
circle to join else it'll be rendered useless. If you're trying to position
this as dev-centric alone and to foster a github-like community around dev
topics, then I could see this working. But as a catch-all social network, I
don't think this will take off.

I commend you for trying, of course. Definitely a lot gutsier than I am to
take on such a bold endeavor.

~~~
dinkumthinkum
I think I agree with you. The more I look at it, I just don't see it. When I
first heard about it, I had this feeling I really wanted it to succeed but
then I didn't know what really way. Then I found out it is like this Twitter
alternative, but I don't like Twitter. I don't like the concept of Twitter, I
don't like its effect on society, on language, on communication. So, whatever,
but I don't know if I would like this. Nevertheless, it could be, if it
worked, a good step in a particular direction for social networking. However,
again, I agree, I don't see how it could work.

But you know, it might be good to have an example of someone actually trying
this and failing, so we don't have to just hypothesize that it will fail?

------
dalton
Hi, if you would like to provide constructive feedback on this, please email
me, or write a blogpost, or talk to us on github here:
<https://github.com/appdotnet/api-spec>

------
54mf
Now this is interesting. I've had an RSS reader/platform on the backburner for
a while, and was considering a similar revshare concept. It seems like a
really great idea, especially for a new platform. Nothing like direct
financial incentive to attract third-party devs.

------
the_unknown
As an end-user of these services will I be able to identify which developers
should receive my payment?

For instance if I run two apps that use their service - a game that I play
every few days and a social aggregator that runs in the background all day
long but that I generally I would like to define that the game is more
"important" to me in terms of dollars than the app is. Perhaps the game is
worth 90% of my payment and the app 5% and some random service that I tried
and abandoned should get the other 5%

~~~
dinkumthinkum
I think this would just complicate things greatly. I also don't really see
much benefit for the end-user to making such distinctions.

------
TheBiv
So the proposal is that I make more money if I make the best stuff...I like
it...I just think that you have to define what "best" means pretty early or
else I, as a developer, will come up with my own definition of "best" and it
will probably look similar to my usage statistics...

------
MatthewPhillips
I think this is a bad idea. It's hard enough to come up with a business plan
that is successful for yourself, you can't possibly come up with one that will
be successful for all 3rd parties as well. Central Planning is never a good
idea. In this particular instance you've set it up so that having users use
3rd party clients/services takes money away from you, disincentivizing you
from treating 3rd parties well.

~~~
dalton
If this works, the idea of having _no_ first party clients is on the table. I
am having an open discussion to figure this out. I just hope people are
constructive.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
So, in this scenario every user will be using a 3rd party client. This
complicates things for a couple of reasons:

1) App.net's income per user is now 50% of the subscription price. You have to
make that work financially for you.

2) The 3rd party's income per user is less than 50%. The most profitable 3rd
party is going to be the client, so you've created a situation where
interesting uses of the API that don't require user interaction are less
profitable.

I want your platform to be successful, but I don't think this will contribute
to it. You're going to spend a lot of time policing 3rd parties' attempt at
gaming the system, which means time your not spending making the platform
better. This is a rabbit hole you don't want to fall into.

------
melvinmt
Eventually all those 3rd party developers want a _bigger_ piece of the app.net
revenue pie and that means they will resort to, yes, ads.

------
peterwiese
i think you should add a moral support button. because right now i wouldn't
pledge you $50 but i generally like the idea and i might join if this really
takes off (and seems to offer me some unique value that i won't get elsewhere
for free). i think showing the number of people that think like me somewhere
on your page might encourage more developers to pledge something.

~~~
currywurst
I agree! I can really imagine dalton's internal struggle now as he tries to
validate the idea in the real world. But I'm more impressed at the way this
experiment is set up.

@dalton: Maybe you should add the infamous "Kudos" button to the join.app.net
site ;) !

