

How App.net Can Change Everything - orianmarx
http://www.orianmarx.com/2012/08/13/how-app-net-can-change-everything/

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mechanical_fish
Clearly one of the biggest challenges of App.net will be keeping the hyperbole
under control. ;)

This is, I suspect, a drawback of the Kickstarter mode of operation: The
momentum cycle is out of step with reality. When you're fundraising you have
to build the excitement to a big wave - a wave which, judging by this post, is
still building in many people's fertile imaginations.

The excitement is important: It focuses people and gets them talking and
causes them to want to keep the party going. And if you're, say, Apple, you
strive to kick off the excitement at a time when you can _feed_ the ensuing
wave of interest with a steady stream of _finished, profitable products_ that
people can buy and use and show to their friends.

But with these Kickstarter-y projects the product is never finished when the
hype peaks, so there's inevitably going to be a crash of excitement during the
long doldrum where nothing seems to be happening. In fact, what's happening is
that the builders are doing the work that you've paid them to do, but the
creation of actual working product is _so_ much less exciting than the
brainstorming phase. Especially when the product is experimental.

But that's how this works, so it is essential to _calm down_. It's tinkering
time, people! Whiteboards and screwdrivers! The Age of Aquarius was not built
in a week.

~~~
SkyMarshal
You're right, except I think it's ok anyway because there's an expectation
with Kickstarter projects that they will take time to actually produce.

People know it will be a long wait for the final product, but get excited over
the process itself - it's fun, they feel some ownership of not just the
product but the process, the ideas are cool, and the whole crowdfunding thing
is still a novelty.

Then there's the doldrums, but that's ok because it's expected, then
additional rounds of excitement as milestones are reached, and finally the
crescendo at the end.

Expectations are managed from start to finish, the only thing the project
absolutely _must_ to do is deliver something worthy of the original mission
statement. It also helps if they keep a constant stream of communication and
updates flowing to their supporters. Seeing the progress is almost as
emotionally rewarding as getting the final product.

------
garyrob
This really makes no sense to me. Orian says that "App.net is a service
dedicated to providing a new infrastructure for social web applications that
will never be funded through ad revenue....App.net has publicly declared that
their most valuable asset is their users’ trust."

But then he goes on to say: "A fundamental misunderstanding about the App.net
platform so far has been that there will never be any ads running anywhere on
the platform. I believe that is incorrect. What is correct is that there will
never be any ads run on Alpha or anywhere else to fund the the operations of
App.net the company."

It sounds to me that if things go the way Orian says, app.net will be
fundamentally the same thing as AWS, where developers pay a service provider
to make their life easier. The difference will be that in app.net's case,
"concepts like users, posts, connecting and sharing" will be supported through
"a scalable infrastructure and a base model".

But economically, the forces will be exactly the same. Application creators
will be motivated to create free apps just as they are today, and to support
them by advertising, just as they are today. And in order to earn advertising
revenue that enables them to compete with their non-app.net competition,
they'll want to target advertisements as efficiently as possible. So they'll
have the same pressures to play games with user privacy.

The end result will be that app.net WILL be funded through ad revenue, to the
same degree that AWS is, since the developers that pay for either of these
services often make their revenues through advertising.

I don't see how the outcome will be any different from the traditional one
from the user privacy point of view, unless app.net provides fundamental
privacy restrictions that are rigid enough that these businesses can't compete
financially with businesses not running on app.net, which doesn't sound like a
viable model for app.net.

While I have paid my $50 to sign up for app.net, I'm not exactly feeling a lot
of confidence in this model. But I haven't spent an enormous time studying it,
and maybe I'm missing something fundamental. If so, what is it?

------
drharris

      It is the brainchild of Dalton Caldwell and Bryan Berg, co-founders of Mixed Media Labs. The vision for App.net was crystalized as an audacious proposal from Dalton after [...]
    

This makes it sound like it's the idea that will define the modern era of
computing. I'm pretty sure that half the internet has thought of making
"Twitter, but charge for it."

    
    
      The most interesting social applications we’ll see in the next phase of the web will be built on App.net.
    

Let's relax a bit on the hyperbole surrounding this thing. It's a paid
Twitter, and only a small percentage of people pay for anything. Of those
services, only a small percentage actually makes it more than a few years.
This is not "the next phase of the web".

~~~
teawithcarl
It's not Twitter. I'm pretty sure you didn't finish reading Orian's article.

Essentially, two ideas are happening simultaneously, which is why most people
(including talented engineers) still think this is a Twitter clone. It's not
at all.

The client Dalton built to "display,the API engine" is indeed a Twitter-esque
client. Well-built, and has features better than Twitter, such as no
advertising, and a fascinating gaggle of talent posting, like early Quora.

However, it's the APP.net "engine" that's actually the jewel. It's an open
platform API that G+, FB, Twitter do NOT have. Think a DIY Anduino
environment, but in software not hardware. Many 3rd party devs are stoked to
build to this far richer, far deeper into the engine open API.

as well, I'm struck by just how many earliest Twitter users (Twitter ID less
than #9999) are in there.

Finally, I sincere do believe this Silicon Valley street brawl is indeed (even
though you pooh-pooh it) an idea which will define the modern era of
computing. In the same way, Linux servers destroyed Windows servers in the
early '90's, via a more open platform. Open platforms win.

~~~
thinkingisfun
Open platforms are nice, but open standards are nicer. So yeah, open platforms
win, for a while. But they're still more part of the problem than of the
solution.

~~~
teawithcarl
Twitter missed its chance to become just such an Imternet messaging protocol,
on the order of email and HTML.

APP.net is a collaboration to reverse Twitter's historical lack of backbone,
choosing not to evolve into that world-class protocol. Remember, @al3x Payne
(+many Twitter engineers lost that battle, and left).

By the way, I agree with you below about Linus Torvalds and John Carmack not
joining. I do understand and believe in where you're coming from.

~~~
thinkingisfun
But the thing is, a standardized protocol is open source, in that if you have
the specs, you can implement it. Not just an API to a black box, but the whole
workings of that box. So either I misunderstood a lot about app.net, or you
misunderstood what I mean when I ramble about protocols. App.net depends on
central hosting, does it not?

It's not like I don't wish them luck, but unless they go the wordpress.com
route -- with self-hosting/tinkering being optional -- I'm just not interested
in "yet another walled garden", even if it has a genuinely well meaning
gardeners, no hidden costs, no price hikes.

So I'll be outside, using RSS feeds, thinking about microformats, pouting :D

~~~
drharris
^ this. It's not a protocol, just an API, one hosted centrally by a business
who is making a lot of promises. I'd like to give DC the benefit of the doubt,
but let's face it; since when has a startup founder planned to stick with a
company until the bitter end. What is to prevent, say, Yahoo from buying them
out and locking down the API? Nothing. What's to prevent them from jacking up
prices once they do get traction? Can you be absolutely sure that they won't
block you (as a developer) if you build a competitive service on top of their
API? What happens when they get investments from a company building "AppPic",
and you're trying to build a different photo sharing service on it?

I completely agree with open protocols and standards, and if we're trying to
change the world, this is the way to do it. OpenID and OpenAuth solve a true
pain point in people's lives, and look how long it's taken to get even a
moderate amount of traction. But it's finally happening to some extent (even
if it is with corporate players like FB/Google). If you want to change the
world, this is the way to do it. Walled gardens, corporate promises, and hype
are not going to do it.

------
MisterBastahrd
App.net will change nothing. The vast majority of users will not switch from
Facebook or Twitter unless there is some compelling reason to do so.

Reddit took traffic from Digg because Digg 4.0 was a horribly bloated
implementation. Facebook took traffic from Myspace because Myspace was a
complete and utter mess on par with Geocities. Google took traffic from
Altavista and Yahoo because their service was just plain better.

Ads are rarely ever a reason that users swap services, and because your
average user doesn't care AT ALL about the trials and tribulations of
developers who are trying to make a buck off the APIs of those companies, they
aren't going to care about App.net products either.

~~~
0x0
Exactly. How is this different from identi.ca?

------
Ryan_Shmotkin
Reminds me how Diaspora changed everything a year ago.

Its cool and stuff for developers...

But did anyone actually think of the other 500 Million people who are supposed
to use this ?

~~~
vandershraaf
It is the hype that has changed everything.

------
ringmaster
Is there an explanation online about how a network that only has 11k users is
worth $50 per year? I can almost see paying that much for the volume of users
on Twitter. Almost. The value of a network that is aligned with users over
advertisers is clear, but where is the value in such a small network? (This
isn't a dig, but genuine curiosity.)

~~~
mechanical_fish
I would pay one thousand dollars a year to join a social network of only
twenty people… if they were the right twenty people.

(And they actually used the network. That's always the trick. Renting the
venue is easy, inviting the people is easy, but will they actually show up?)

As someone on App.net itself was pointing out yesterday, the current vibe is
basically that of an industry conference: A bunch of people with vaguely-
aligned interests hang around in a room swapping small talk. Such conferences
are much more valuable in person than online, of course, but in person they're
worth hundreds to thousands of dollars for a few days. $50 per year is a
steal.

But, again, the people you want to talk with have to show up. We shall see how
the conversation evolves.

~~~
podperson
But here's the thing -- will the twenty people you want on your perfect
network be willing to pay $50/year to be on it and make your network perfect?

Bear in mind that each of them has 20 people they want on THEIR perfect
network.

"The internet treats cost as damage and routes around it."

I think the key trick would be creating a "free" network that lets you pay (a
very small amount) for key niceness, e.g. freedom from ads and spam. Even
better, take an existing free service and piggyback a paid service on top of
it that adds useful value. (I'm thinking here of email where you pay $0.01 to
send a message per Bill Gates's excellent idea for eliminating most spam.)

------
recursive
It really sounds like framework for making mobile apps using .net.

------
AndrewDucker
I love the financing approach of Dreamwidth - which is to have free users and
paid users, and the paid ones get more stuff, higher limits, etc.

Because you don't want to lock free users out entirely, but on the other hand,
having your users also be your customers is better for everyone in the long
run.

------
henq
I once hit upon a P2P twitter-clone project. It thought and think the idea is
_great_ , but you still needed a twitter account for some reason, that was a
bummer.

So if someone comes with a P2P twitter clone, _that_ would be something: \- no
advertising \- no censoring (china!) \- large cache of tweets stored for
offline viewing \- all kinds of additional services could connect, like
history logs, searching, discovery, notifications.

A drawback would be the lack of speed, as p2p networks have delays, obviously.
But this could be overcome at least partly by making followers also p2p
neighbors, me thinks.

------
cturner
The website says that by helping fund it you are committing to the first year
of payments. "You will be committing to pre-paying a full year.." Yet from
what I can tell that first year price hasn't yet been defined. Is that right?
I wouldn't enter a contract with an undefined liability.

------
crisedward
I like the model, except the part where you charge the developers, if you
charge 50$ to developers it means developers will charge on their apps, means
that users will have to pay even more

------
teawithcarl
Dalton Caldwell is responding to PG's call at PyCon to "swing for the fences,
and build $1b large, scalable platforms".

PG suggested having the balls to disrupt Google Search itself, by building a
new search platform, only for the top 10,000 über-geeks in tech. PG believes
done properly, this will scale a new search engine, which he thinks is
woefully needed.

That's what Dalton's doing, except to Facebook and Twitter. Responding to PG's
call to be bold. And he's nailing it.

Right now, the App.net ecosystem is 10,000+ of the tech's finest minds. It
feels like a private Path network, with private access to many of the top
minds in tech. A myriad of heavyweight tech talent are in their voicing their
support, struggling to fix social.

It's a great place to read tech. It's one of the best geek parties on earth.
Twitter has lost the ability to do that "intimately for a small conference of
10,000 advanced minds".

By the way - App.net is not Twitter. The core blackbox (App.net) is an engine
to build any construct upon, including (but not limited to) Twitter
innovation.

The current client, a 'referential implementation' (which looks like Twitter
... Orian calls it Alpha) is only a proof of concept by Dalton, to show one
excellent construct on top of the broader App.net engine.

I think Dalton has nailed PG's challenge, and innovators want in on the fun.

~~~
thinkingisfun
"Right now, the App.net ecosystem is 10,000+ of the tech's finest minds"

that made me smile, then I realized you're serious, which kinda gave me a
shudder.

unless "tech" is code for "marketing scripts" or something? sure you can NOT
be talking about technology in general. that would be so deluded, it might
just about wrap around to humble again.

~~~
teawithcarl
Look through the list for yourself: (it's free)

<http://alpha.app.net/teawithcarl/following> (270 people, a who's who of
Silicon Valley)

~~~
thinkingisfun
The list is free? It better be, seeing how it mostly consists of nicks and
cutesy taglines :P

"Silicon valley" is not "technology". It's great you like SV so much, but that
doesn't make it whatever you want it to be. even if we restricted it to
computers: when are Linus Torvalds or John Carmack expected to sign up? Huh.

~~~
jmathai
You must not be familiar with the bubble which exists in SV. It's one of the
only things I despise about this place. Love the rest :).

