
App.net funded with $500,000. - aculver
https://join.app.net/?fully-funded
======
dkrich
I'm not really sure what the purpose of this service is. Could somebody please
explain? I'm not trying to be a dick. I myself wouldn't pay to use Facebook
minus the ads. I barely use it as it is. I only pay for things that provide me
with some utility. The description of "a paid, real-time social feed" is vague
and ambiguous.

~~~
achompas
_I'm not really sure what the purpose of this service is. ... I myself
wouldn't pay to use Facebook minus the ads._

You answered your own question above, and also identified why app.net won't
interest you. If you're okay with ads, then I think you'd get zero utility
from app.net

~~~
dkrich
I appreciate the response, but that doesn't really answer the question of what
the service provides that Facebook or Twitter doesn't.

Are ads in and of themselves really a huge problem? I don't find myself often
annoyed by them. Now if there were a systemic change to the service because
you didn't have to alter the experience for users to generate ad revenue, then
I begin to understand. However if this is the idea, then in what ways the
service would be different is exactly what I'm trying to figure out.

Remember, there are two sides to the coin "we offer a better experience
without the ads" method. First of all you are going to get a smaller user
base. So how much are you going to charge? $5/month? $10/month? You would need
to get a pretty massive user base to be able to pay the overhead and attract
top engineering talent, so in the end I'm not sure you'd be a whole lot better
off.

~~~
chimi
It's more fundamentally about this: Do you want to be the product (facebook,
twitter) or the customer (app.net)?

A lot of people don't want to be the product and believe when a company
focuses on them as a customer rather than them as eyeballs to be sold to
advertisers, who are the customer, then a better service is the outcome for
the users of the service.

With app.net the user is the customer. With Facebook and Twitter, the user is
the product. With App.Net user interests and service provider interests are
aligned. The provider wants the service to be better for the users.

With Facebook and Twitter and other ad supported products the users who value
their privacy have intentions which are constantly at odds with the service
provider whose intention is to continually open up details about the
individuals so that those details can be used to improve ad success rates and
profitability.

~~~
natrius
_"Do you want to be the product (facebook, twitter) or the customer
(app.net)?"_

Where's the evidence that suggests that millions of people care about this
distinction enough to pay for it?

~~~
dannyr
Recent decisions made by Twitter are all about optimizing the site for
advertising revenues.

I don't think Twitter has any other choice because they chose the free path
from the start. I highly doubt Twitter would suddenly switch to a
premium/freemium model.

While Twitter has empowered revolutions, I think the quality of the community
has degraded though.

I believe that if people pay for being part of a community, people would care
to improve its quality. If something is free, people just won't take care of
it.

~~~
taligent
I really don't get this "quality of the community" has degraded argument. I
hear the same about Facebook.

If the quality is degrading it's because of YOUR friends and YOUR choices
about who to follow. Other people including myself simply hide posts or
unfollow when the SNR becomes too low.

~~~
tripzilch
But wouldn't it be so much _nicer_ if you didn't have to ignore the little
people?

------
eoghan
The reason I think App.net is going to grow is NOT because it doesn't have ads
or that the "users are not the product", etc. It's because the community it
hosts will be so tightly grouped around a similar, passionate interest: tech
startups. Requiring payment, being called "App.net" (they'll be tempted to
change this), and being distributed via word of mouth amongst the segregated
tech startup community, will prevent so many different types of people from
using it. This is all a great thing and I bet there will be opportunities for
other "Twitter for ________" ventures. Charging for a service like this that
caters to a much smaller market makes it sustainable.

Congrats to Dalton and all involved. This is one of the most interesting and
courageous internet projects in recent time.

~~~
jschlesser
I think how you concive it now is about spam free twitter or fb and thats what
everybody is talking about. I dont think thats the real story. Imagine what
you could do with real time syndication infrastructure with privacy and
ownership controls built in. BP monitors, blood glucose monitors, runkeeper
data, music listening streams, all kinds of data streams and a robust
community of app builders to build all kinds of streaming and where desired
sharing. If i dont want to see your spotify listens, i can turn that off, if i
dont want you to see my health info but want to share with my doc, that can
happen too. Go nuts, imagine the future without having to be forced to cram it
into a timeline or public feed mined for ad relevance.

~~~
localhost3000
still unclear to me why i would/should pay to publish my runkeeper data into
the ether or why i would pay to consume yours...will every user of app.net pay
for the service? or is it only some subset who opt-in as donors? if the later,
doesn't this create a free-rider problem? also, in that case you wind up with
a small minority of donor users who are the customers and who set the agenda,
not the majority user base, right? ...if the former, how can this become a
mainstream consumer product? normal people don't care about any of these
'problems' and why will they pay for something facebook/twitter gives them in
exchange for 'viewing' ads they've learned to ignore?

------
jtokoph
Not that I'm accusing Dalton of doing this, but when croudfunding without
using a platform like kickstarter, it might be too easy to fake backer numbers
in order to meet the goal or inflate popularity.

What this means for the future: Companies will announce croudfunding and then
fake amazing numbers in order to appear popular and gain lots of press.

I can see the headline now: "ACME Software raises $3 million in first 24
hours!" Actual funds raised: $250.

~~~
sdqali
A number of people have raised this point to Dalton and he has promised that
he will do a third party verification of all funding promises.

For example, see this: <https://twitter.com/daltonc/status/234698066245074945>
and <https://twitter.com/daltonc/status/234399350275571714>

EDIT: Added a link to Twitter conversation showing more context.

~~~
J-H
Dalton also says this on app.net: <https://alpha.app.net/dalton/post/32618>

------
dj2stein9
A centralized social network is what's wrong. Despite their best intentions
they're still going to have all their users and developers by the balls. This
absolutely will not replace Facebook or Twitter, it'll be just another one of
the dozens of copycats like Path.

What really needs to happen is an open decentralized protocol needs to be
agreed upon for newsfeeds + blog posts (wordpress) + microblog (twitter). Then
everyone can write their own servers and clients and operate in a manner like
Email currently works.

~~~
unimpressive
> What really needs to happen is an open decentralized protocol needs to be
> agreed upon for newsfeeds + blog posts (wordpress) + microblog (twitter).
> Then everyone can write their own servers and clients and operate in a
> manner like Email currently works.

Then do it. Make everyone look like idiots for not doing it sooner. Make it
_so cool I have to sign up._

~~~
loceng
I'm guessing people are working on it. It's not an easy problem to solve
though.

~~~
mindcrime
_I'm guessing people are working on it._

They are:

<http://www.w3.org/2005/Incubator/federatedsocialweb/>

~~~
loceng
Cool, thanks.

------
citricsquid
I'm genuinely surprised, I didn't believe it would make it this far. I've
backed it and I really hope it delivers, it's going to be very interesting to
see how this turns out. I feel sceptical (because the value in Twitter is the
people, not the platform) but I was also sceptical that this would ever reach
$100,000, let alone $500,000, so clearly any assumptions previously made are
wrong.

~~~
kmfrk
It's had a big upswing the last few days. Don't know what caused it, but maybe
Dalton's blog posts fanned the fire.

~~~
thirdsun
Gruber also mentioned it, explaining that it hasn't reached the funding goal
yet.

------
aculver
I love this. In years past, Dalton and his team were able to raise millions in
funding from a top-tier venture capital firm. But raising $500,000 in
_revenue_ from his target customers, that's a whole different ball game! Super
excited to see where this goes. Congratulations to Dalton and the whole team!

~~~
guscost
This is awesome, it even looks like the "funding bar" graphic breaks when it
gets to 100%...

Brilliant.

~~~
graiz
Not sure that's on purpose. The inner DIV is set to 106.08% width. Seems they
are 106% funded.

~~~
stfu
Is there actually any 3rd party ala kickstarter verifying the donations? Or is
this number similar to those of political campaigns and their online
fundraising self-reporting?

~~~
icebraining

        We are using Stripe to host/power the billing aspects of join.app.net. In the very near
        future I will ask an impartial 3rd party take a look at our data (while preserving all
        privacy of our backers) and publicly verify that the join.app.net was operated in an honest
        manner. 
    

<http://daltoncaldwell.com/we-did-it>

------
dave_sullivan
That's pretty amazing. Clearly app.net is tapping into something that people
are starting to feel pretty strongly about--the benefits of "free" aren't
necessarily worth the consequences in the longterm.

I could see a similar model of aligning user/company interests rather than
advertiser/company interests working for other services--email probably being
the biggest that comes to mind.

This is actually a good thing for revenue as even a small membership fee is
going to VASTLY outweigh the per user revenue generated from advertising.
We'll see if this idea is capable of jumping from internet nerdom to the
mainstream, but mainstream users are also becoming more and more aware of the
actual cost of 'free' products.

So... congrats app.net team, and good luck!

~~~
icebraining
_Clearly app.net is tapping into something that people are starting to feel
pretty strongly about--the benefits of "free" aren't necessarily worth the
consequences in the longterm._

Well, maybe. Let's remember that Twitter has more than a hundred million
accounts, while App.net has ~7500; we have no evidence that the people feeling
that are not just a small number of outliers, much like there always will be.

~~~
stock_toaster

      > Well, maybe. Let's remember that Twitter has more than a hundred million accounts, while App.net has ~7500; we have no evidence that the people feeling that are not just a small number of outliers, much like there always will be.
    

Does it _matter_ if they don't get hundreds of millions of accounts, as long
as the business is sustainable and users enjoy the service?

~~~
natrius
Users are unlikely to enjoy the service if their messages don't have an
audience. After a year is up I bet people will tire of having to use both
Twitter and App.net, and stop paying for the latter. How many App.net users
have stopped using Twitter? That's an important metric to pay attention to
over the next year. I predict it will be near zero, and most people aren't
willing to pay in money and inconvenience for an ad-free product. Especially
when they could just install a couple of extensions and get the same result
with products that actually have an audience.

~~~
lloeki
> How many App.net users have stopped using Twitter

Even before APp.Net I contemplated leaving Twitter because of the noise, the
push towards ads and the general climate toward third-parties. I certainly
would _not_ use Twitter without TweetBot.

------
sylvinus
I think the stats will clearly show that it wouldn't have been funded without
the Gruber post.

What puzzles me is that the HN crowd seems to be the target audience for
whatever it is App.net wants to do but Dalton & friends totally failed to get
them interested enough even after so much posts here.

With Gruber they reached a different crowd and got the money, which _may_
prove that they have something interesting on their hands but now they'll have
do deal with different expectations from their users, and I'm highly skeptical
it will make their strategy clearer.

------
maxbogue
While I'm in favor of the concept behind this, I have one deeply concerning
question that I'm surprised I haven't seen anyone else ask here:

Why is it called App.net?

The first 4 or 5 articles I saw about it, I ignored completely because I
assumed it was some sort of app (web/mobile/whatever) framework, not a social
network. They talk about the users being the customers (versus advertisers),
but the name of the service is clearly targeting developers, not the users...

~~~
walkon
I agree. The chosen name of app.net is simultaneously generic and borderline
misleading (I too thought it might be some framework or app development tool).
This alone is enough to make me a bit skeptical of app.net's leadership. They
might as well call it acloudservice.com and it would have a similarly
worthless conveyance of meaning.

------
shell0x
I don't want to ask dumb questions and I also read the content on their site,
but I'm still not sure if it's just a twitter alternative or more. And what
about identica? Isn't it a similar service like app.net?

~~~
chris24
My understanding is that yes, identica and app.net are similar, except for
their business models. Identica didn't have a clear business model (AFAIK), so
they would likely resort to advertising. App.net is trying to avoid that by
charging users directly.

------
acoyfellow
Is this going to inspire more companies / startups to go the crowdfunding
route? (I think so). How many companies are going to now cite: "App.net style"
of pre-launch efforts? Is this a good or a bad thing?

This is a whole new era, either way. Congrats to the App.net team!

~~~
andrewcross
I think we'll definitely see a lot of attempts, but I don't know if many will
have much success.

It's very similar to Louis C.K.'s online video. While his video was
successful, it only worked because he'd already established a name for
himself. Other, lesser known, comedians will have a hard time replicating that
because they don't have the brand already.

If first-time entrepreneurs try and use crowd-funding, I just don't see
catching unless the product is truly awesome (think Pebble).

~~~
icebraining
That's true for every type of funding, though.

~~~
andrewcross
But the big difference is the traditional investment model requires fewer
backers. While by no means is raising investment an easy process, first time
entrepreneurs have a better chance since they have to sell fewer people on it.

------
comex
_@jayneely: Free-for-students is a bad way to go. Most students can't
contribute much value, and it leaves out all the young people that either
can't afford or chose not to go to college._

 _@christopher: I think there's value in some kind of tiered pricing model,
especially when it comes to enabling students - in a managed, not free for
all, manner - to contribute positively to the ecosystem. Perhaps that's the
educator in me._

 _@elliottpayne: I think there's a broader issue of elitism & the digital
divide baked into @adn, but that's a bit out of scope of this topic. But it's
a weird suggestion that students can't add value_

This is a thread from the site, but I'm quoting it here because it's relevant
to the discussion about what kind of community app.net will become. The first
two comments make me uneasy: even if there is value in excluding/discouraging
people who don't contribute positively-- which is true for a site like Hacker
News, but not so much, I think, for a Twitter-like site where you only see the
activity of people you follow; the Global stream is an exception, but it'll
only take a little more growth before it becomes unusable anyway-- trying to
judge from a blank slate whether someone who might sign up for the site is
likely to contribute value, especially based on such vague metrics as "ability
to pay $50" and "student", runs the risk of being elitism for the sake of
elitism. For some, $50 is enough of a barrier that they'll only sign up if
they're especially interested (a sign that they'll contribute value); for
others, it's little more than an impulse purchase. As for students, I agree
that the site should avoid favoring students over people who don't go to
college, but as a rather biased student (and backer), I contest the sentiment
that students can't contribute value or need to be "managed" more than your
average slightly older entrepreneur. ;p Even though age probably weakly
correlates with quality, the goal of the site should not be to slightly
increase average quality, but, if anything, to ensure that the highest quality
users, the right edge of the bell curve, are there, which exclusionary
principles will discourage.

Of course, the $50 is not actually some kind of proof of relevance but actual
funding for the operation of the site; it can't be avoided. But I think it
should mostly be considered a necessary evil, and there should be a focus on
letting people who are unwilling to pay it but are strongly interested in the
community get in anyway, such as with a sponsorship system.

------
terhechte
I've been using the alpha for the past days and it's really refreshing.
Interesting discussions, and the API that is shaping up, looks really good.
Congratulations and thanks Dalton.

~~~
Leynos
How many characters does it allow per message? From the screenshots, it looks
like 256. Is this correct?

Thanks.

~~~
anu_gupta
Yes, it's 256 chars.

~~~
mechanical_fish
This is quite the subtle design decision: It makes it more difficult to write
an elegant version of the obvious App.net -> Twitter bridge.

(Such a thing might be difficult anyway - my casual reading suggests that
anything beyond the most basic one-way bridge would be a Twitter TOS
violation:

<https://dev.twitter.com/terms/api-terms>

 _1\. All use of the Twitter API and_ content, [emphasis mine - ed.]
_documentation, code, and related materials made available to you on or
through Twitter ("Twitter Content") is subject to and must comply with these
Rules_

 _5A. Your Client must use the Twitter API as the sole source for features
that are substantially similar to functionality offered by Twitter. Some
examples include trending topics, who to follow, and suggested user lists._

 _5E. You may not use Twitter Content or other data collected from end users
of your Client to create or maintain a separate status update or social
network database or service._

 _6\. You do not have a license to Twitter Content submitted through your
Service other than the rights granted in the Rules._

What a legal minefield. So it's probably a good idea to have an obvious
guardrail to prevent people from straying too close to the minefield, and this
256-character limit is a cute way to implement the guardrail.)

------
possibilistic
I know that this service may become valuable for a large number of the HN
crowd. It might be up my alley for a price of $10/yr or so. But at $50/yr, I
cannot justify its expense.

That said, I wish Caldwell the best of luck. In the future hopefully he can
provide tiered pricing plans.

------
shortformblog
Credit Stephen Fry for probably at least $10k of that — he told his 4 million
followers about the service, which pushed it over the edge:
<https://twitter.com/stephenfry/status/234695539357257728>

Seriously though, this is great. I'm looking forward to seeing what happens
next. Hoping to experiment on the journalism front there.

------
talleyrand
Greetings from way out here in Userland! Out here, there is no way that people
are going to pay to be "social" online. Just FYI.

~~~
guscost
Internet and power are not free.

~~~
_sh
Once you've paid for Internet and power, being 'social online' is indeed free.

~~~
guscost
But with who, and in what context?

------
dylanz
I feel like being "that guy", and saying that this is going to fail. It's not
going to gain traction, and will not be profitable or popular in the future.

The reason I want to be "that guy", is that me, Murphy, and his law... have a
little thing going. I develop, but definitely don't use social applications (I
find them distracting and mundane). I think the concept of a completely open
and distributed system like dj2stein9 mentioned is what really needs to be
implemented in order to leap frog this idea, and others out there, that might
be trying to come up with alternatives to the current players. However, I can
definitely see this gaining traction. I love the concept of an Ad free network
as well as a nice API.

Dalton and friends. I hope you're extremely successful with this endeavour,
and, that you can all comment on this comment in the future with a big "I told
you so".

~~~
charlieok
"I feel like being "that guy", and saying that this is going to fail. It's not
going to gain traction, and will not be profitable or popular in the future."

...

"However, I can definitely see this gaining traction."

eh?

~~~
nilium
I think his point is that he would love to be the naysayer, play devil's
advocate, but in this case believes the product will survive despite a
tendency to view social networks cynically.

~~~
charlieok
ah, that makes sense. My mistake.

------
jamiecurle
To have funded something in which users are going to be first class citizens
feels remarkably refreshing.

------
bitsoda
Am I alone in thinking the ramp up in funding was a bit sketchy over the past
three days? Did Dalton or a VC self-fund this to appear like it was gaining
traction? I'm sure Gruber's post had an effect, but something seems off. I
don't think the reason for hosting their own "Kickstarter-like campaign" was
to save themselves the 5% cut. By controlling the funding, they are only
accountable to themselves and control all visibility.

Note: There's nothing wrong with using your own money to fund your product,
but some more transparency would be nice.

~~~
nathan_f77
I had the same thought, but that's not the case:
<https://alpha.app.net/dalton/post/32618>

------
drharris
Does anyone else see this and think, "It's like Twitter, except for people who
want to complain about Twitter all the time"? That's the vibe I get. There's
no way those high school friends I reconnected with are paying for this.
There's no way my uncles or cousins are signing up for this. There's no way
more than ~5% of my real-life social network will. It seems like yet another
Silicon Valley niche product. Maybe I'm wrong, I just don't see it for the 95%
of the world that doesn't care about T/FB monetization.

------
Jaigus
The idea of twitter/facebook not appealing to their users enough may be a bit
exaggerated. Yes, facebook/twitter must please their advertisers, however they
only have those advertisers paying them because they have many
users/subscribers. To keep advertisers coming to them, surely they must keep
users happy so they can stay and even hope to attract more?

Now I'm sure having to cater to the advertisers certainly affects the decision
making(even a bit adversely at times), however their massive following is
essentially what makes them valuable.

I also notice that whenever this idea is challenged, I only see people simply
parroting his belabored battle-cry of "catering to the users" without actually
giving any concrete examples. I'm not against app.net's idea, I just believe
the true novelty of this project is creating a micro-twitter(which can also be
created on twitter by simply following certain people) for affluent tech
people, and _keeping_ it that way via the subscription fee.

Besides that, I haven't read or heard of anything that they plan to do
fundamentally different than twitter. Honestly, even if they do, and it
actually proves to be a great feature that users love, I don't see why twitter
can't simply copy it and perhaps even make it better.

------
jschlesser
Its not about destroying or replacing twitter or fb. Thats unlikely and not
the goal. Its about new uses. T and FB have defined their contexts and rules.
The infrastructure may look very similar but the universe of contexts and
possibilities for non T and FB contexts is the point. The space of uses
outside of T and FB is vast when publicity and ad focused mining isnt the core
driver of business. FB and T have decided to compete for belly fat ads, thats
the real shame. However they are both still revolutionary in terms of societal
impact, they are just going to coerce their usage to fit their business model.
Egyptian protesters and new moms posting baby photos could care less about
belly fat ads. I truly sincerely hope both services find a more relevant way
so that all models flourish.

------
electic
I love the idea. I am totally rooting for them but I hate the name. I don't
see someone in marketing, either girl or guy, who loves tech but does't know
the internals of tech, singing up to this service. It's too narrow in it's
focus.

------
jschlesser
Any reader of my comments should know im a supporter but not employed or
beholden to app.net in any way and my opinions are solely based on my
interpretation of publicly available info and informal interactions with
people inside the app.net community. The actual apis and rules arent final but
dalton has made many public commitments and has a history of doing what he
says he will do. The work behind app.net didnt spring up overnight. I assume
some vc money is in there somewhere so i wouldnt necessarily go vc bashing
either. It looks a lot more like a pivot and if there are vcs involved, good
on ya for backing it.

------
cmod
1\. Awesome to see this funded.

2\. Curious to see all the post-funding pile-on. Looks like their subscribers
are jumping quite quickly (for a Sunday!) now that funding has been met.
Funding validation makes it feel like a safer 'bet' now?

3\. _Really_ curious to see if app.net can scale better than Twitter from the
start. I'm talking full archives, proper search, robust conversation tracking.
If app.net covers these areas sufficiently well, I could see this becoming a
go-to feed for journalists / other people for whom proper archives and full-
search would be invaluable.

------
sdqali
An update from Dalton that deals with new features and third party
verification of the funding - <http://daltoncaldwell.com/we-did-it>

------
smbwrs
I was a huge doubter on day one - the initial video and manifesto seemed
confusing and too abstract to fly - but seeing Dalton handle intensive
negativity (even some from me, I'm a bit ashamed to admit) with such aplomb
won me over. Seeing his frequent updates with progress, even before the $500k
mark, was a great confidence booster.

Every cent well deserved. I was a supporter, and I look forward to helping
build app.net in to something amazing.

~~~
acoyfellow
This is very much how my experience with App.net has been. I was a non-
believer, but seeing how Dalton handled things has turned me into a major fan
of his.

------
briandear
I sue Tweetbot on my iPhone and can't remember ever seeing an ad. This idea
that twitter is getting cluttered by advertising is just a myth.

~~~
albedoa
Can you point to someone who is making that claim?

------
arunoda
This is awesome.

But the real question is how they got funded more than 50% in just 4 days?
It's amazing. I hope this is not a manual increase of the counter.

~~~
jmandzik
I think a large part of the strong finish is a feedback loop. As it gets
closer to achieving the goal, the belief that this concept could take off
strengthens, which leads to more signups.

That and the press blitz, of course.

~~~
sdqali
And celebrity users endorsing it would have helped as well. For example -
Robert Scoble, Stephen Fry
(<https://twitter.com/stephenfry/status/234695539357257728>) etc.

------
nikunjk
This is legit. Dalton's model of funding might spur interest in startups to
get money from actual users, rather than venture capital

~~~
runako
Not to be too snarky, but this is likely much easier for startups that already
have funding from Andreesen Horowitz. This campaign was more about gauging
interest than getting money.

------
hxf148
I've upgraded my account and am going to take a spin at a html5 app. It's an
interesting group of people and even if it does not get massive scale it's
fun.

Also keep in mind that I don't think app.net wants to be Twitter, it wants to
be the back end public messaging system for any and all kinds of apps that
have a need for a messaging or notification network.

------
deepGem
There's something really inspiring about the way Dalton Caldwell speaks in the
video. His demeanor shows an air of confidence, but it also shows how pissed
off he is with the existing ad supported free model. Here's wishing the very
best for app.net's success.

------
whunut
To be honest, I was skeptical App.net would meet its $500,000 goal on time.
Not because I thought it was a bad idea, but because raising that much money
from customers just seemed an almost impossible feat.

So congrats, Dalton, can't wait to see what happens next!

------
katcaverly
Congratulations to Team App.net and a special shoutout to the Alpha
App.netizens who brought da noise, and the passion to the last 10 days.

Now it is up to the developers to show us!!

------
losvedir
Cool! I backed it mostly to snag my first name (@gabe) in case it actually
does take off, but it's a neat idea, too. Congrats to Dalton and the gang.

------
dev1n
"If it weren't for the last minute, nothing would get done."

A quote hanging above my Grandma's oven :-P

Congrats Dalton

------
axusgrad
I think most people signing up now are doing it for the land-rush of
usernames.

------
TorBoT
What do they mean "claim" twitter name? do they mean claim your app.net name?

~~~
ChrisBanner
The intent was that a twitter user could reserve the same username for
App.net. In reality, you can reserve any username -- it doesn't have to be a
twitter handle.

------
guscost
Congrats, dude. Now to scrape together a seriously unexpected $100.

------
jasonhanley
Heh, so there's going to be just under 10,000 people on app.net.

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gaving
...bootstrap? :/

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sdqali
Are you referring to App.net's use of Twitter bootstrap to build their UI or
to the way Dalton funded the execution of this idea?

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gaving
The former, just hell of a bland way to build things these days (even though
it is great). Even if it was skinned or something it would go a long way of
making it stick out a bit.

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shantanubala
I think for now it's just for the efficiency of making a solid alpha. I have
no doubt they'll get some solid designers working on some of the UI (and UX
people as well).

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obilgic
But Will it scale?

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popmentos
If Groupon would reimplement its account system to adopt App.net, (i.e. paying
the annual fee by a ratio of each bill), App.net might scale.

What Groupon get is a new role that introducing customers to companies by
letting customers inquire information of services in the long term.
Especially, companies who sell massive online education can attract more
shoppers through Groupon.

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arunoda
App.net will reach $1,000,000 mark when they will be funded (AUGUST 13 at
11:59PM PDT.)

