

I've spent a few days 60-70 hours in app.net, got questions? - jschlesser

Im not paid in any way or connected in any way except through my membership.  Ask away.  I think there are many misconceptions about it but I want to know what you want to know.
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noart
After spending a considerable amount of time using the service are you excited
to continue using it? Do you see exciting growth potential?

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jschlesser
Yes, but not how you might expect. I don't conceive of it as something where
Dalton has to build this 1 big social network to eat the rest of them. Its
going to allow a lot more context sensitive (in product/app/content) social
networks to form that will be smaller but way more relevant. I think even
after the apis are all baked there will be a robust services industry around
it, collecting filtering graph walking analysis services etc. I think people
looking at alpha.app.net and thinking thats it are totally off base. Not even
wrong, misled by internet echo chamber.

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jschlesser
Also, by using it I mean both keeping in contact with people I met in
Alpha.app.net but using a different UI which somebody already built, but more
importantly, using the apis to build new social stuff and helping to form the
apis.

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taligent
Tell me why this isn't a clone of Twitter where I pay to talk to almost
exclusively under 30yo guys.

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jschlesser
Actually there isn't a UI really to App.net per se, its an infrastructure
play, more twilio than twitter. They built a UI for demo purposes to let
people know that it wasn't vapor. They don't even refer to the UI as app.net,
its called Alpha to differentiate it. App.net is the apis on git hub, some of
which are baked, enough to build Alpha. If you get a dev subscription you get
api keys. Ive seen some pretty cool stuff already. The idea is that you build
whatever social experience you want for your product. here is a for instance.
Suppose you are the new york times, you could build social into your website
and apps. subscribers could then see their social interactions and data in
context rather than crammed between a cat photo and a belly fat ad on or
underneath an unrelated tweet. Sane people could go have a convo and exclude
trolls by forming ad hoc groups etc... tailor to the audience and the site to
enhance the experience.

Also, there are/were cool people in Alpha and it wasn't so crowded a few hours
ago that you couldn't talk to them. Famous VCs, internet celebs like Gruber
and McCracken and Siracusa, regular celebs like Stephen Fry etc... I don't
know what the plan is for Alpha but the point is the infrastructure not Dalton
making an ad free twitterbook clone. Other people have already made better UIs
than Alpha even. Apis pretty easy to use.

