
The money part of App.net is a red herring - alexknowshtml
http://alexhillman.com/the-money-is-a-red-herring
======
OoTheNigerian
I personally think that this post does not belong to the top of HN for the
mere fact that it says nothing.

Writing a blogpost speculating about the motivations behind App.net, behind
people backing it, the result, the lesson about the post speaking of the fear
of money, about how app.net will turnout.

Just a bunch of negative speculation bundled together and called a blogpost
then to go on to the comments and boast about how charitable you are [1]

At worst, APP.NET is an experiment and people found it worthy to spend $50 on
this experiment. NO-ONE knows how this thing can/will turn out.

I am really looking forward to what the outcome of this project/experiment
would be. i.e a real-time messaging API with no fear of the rug being pulled
under you by the platform owner.

[1] <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4379277>

~~~
alexknowshtml
I have an honest question for you because I'm trying to understand this mode
of thinking myself: why suddenly "no fear" of the rug being pulled out from
under you? How does giving Dalton your money permanently align your interests
with his?

Edit: this isn't meant to accuse Dalton of nefarious plans in the least. I
just don't understand the causal link.

~~~
mechanical_fish
I've been thinking about it. And my best guess so far is: App.net builds
confidence because, if it succeeds, it will be an existence proof of itself.

Or, to be a bit more concrete: People are supporting App.net because they hope
it's possible, as a business proposition, to successfully fork a subnetwork
away from a major social network. Once we have confidence that this is
possible, it feels like we can always do it again. We can fork it as many
times as we need to. When the rug gets pulled out from under some of us, as it
inevitably will, we'll weave another rug.

The money thing, which you believe is irrelevant, is actually part of the
argument here: The more revenue each node in the network is worth, the smaller
the size of the sub-network that can profitably be broken off and operated
independently.

(Note that there's as yet no evidence that _Twitter itself_ , let alone a
subset of Twitter, can be run at a profit.)

By this interpretation, if App.net succeeds at all, Dalton's personal notions
of how to run a network will rapidly diminish in relevance. Because, once one
App.net succeeds, more will rapidly follow.

~~~
alexknowshtml
I never said the money is irrelevant, quite the contrary.

It's VERY relevant. Just not in the way that the other author I'd cited made
it out to be, nor does money have the protective alignment that I think people
have convinced themselves it brings.

That said, your fragmentation thesis is an interesting one for sure. Have you
seen anything along those lines researched outside of this context, by chance?

------
unimpressive
My current suspicion is that Dalton has no idea how to build what he wants, in
fact he doesn't even know what the thing he wants _is_. So he's fanning the
flames on this discussion to let everyone else come up with something for him.

~~~
jbigelow76
I was once tasked with building a web app for a real estate company. The
ultimate stake holder (can't remember his title) told me as we were wrapping
up a requirements gathering meeting:

    
    
        I don't know what I want, but I'll know it when I see it.
    

I was still too green to know that I should have run for my life after that
statement.

~~~
jay_kyburz
Really? When I hear that I think I think "You Beaut!"

A customer who wants to pay you to mess around with new ideas and come up with
something great. Nothing more boring than client that knows exactly what they
want.

~~~
rglullis
> who wants to pay you to mess around with new ideas and come up with
> something great.

My experience is that the only _want_ to pay for the "coming up with something
great" part, not the messing around with new ideas.

Worse still, they only _want_ to pay for what they see, which is usually just
the tip of the iceberg.

Give me a boring client over someone with lots of imagination, any day.

------
dinkumthinkum
I think there is definitely something to be said for the view that App.net is
this elusive concept that people are wildly dreaming about. Look through at
the 100 submissions about App.net per day, there are so many different
speculations, even contradictory ones, but not a lot of information coming
out.

There's a group that thinks App.net is not the point, they think App.net is
somehow the social network backbone or "social-network-as-a-service" or
something. But that doesn't make a lot of sense to me because App.net is
charging. So if you start you're little niche social network "MechanicWorld,"
which seems like back-to-the-future but ok, are the users paying MechanicWorld
or App.net (how would they know App.net exists?). Is MechanicWorld going to
offer free signup, provide an advertising based business model, and simply
subsidize the free user accounts? If that's the case, what's the point of
App.net again?

Some people think it is a twitter but for people that visit HN/TechCrunch ...
don't those people use Twitter? That's a pretty strange market, but this one
is a bit of a strawman, I've only heard it a bit and I don't think Dalton has
intention of this.

I think it is still very vague what it is and how it will work. I think most
concrete, least nebulous, it could be is "Twitter that You Pay For - Period."
It has been covered to death, but I don't think you can rival Twitter with
that.

Do you really see CNN blasting it all over the place, restaurants putting
"Follow us on App.net, ($50/yr)," etc? That's the weight, unfortunately
Twitter has. Twitter has people believing they are responsible for the Arab
Spring (yeah right) -- I don't know how App.net is going to get this kind of
press.

And the other thing, App.net, really? That's the name? When I first heard
about it, I thought "Oh, ok they seem to have some completely unrelated
business already and are just using this 'App.net' thing temporarily" but I
don't see anything implying that is going to change; I'm going to assume
someone is working on this, because that's no name for what they're trying to
do (whatever it is exactly).

Nevertheless, it is nice to see something besides "We are revolutionizing the
way users share photos or communicate" "... but we don't know how we're going
to make money -- advertising?"

------
diego
_"By the way, I put my $50 in out of pure morbid curiosity of what’s under the
hood. In retrospect, I should’ve donated to a charity."_

That's a pretty callous way to end a post, Alex. It's not either-or. If you
really feel that way, ask for a refund. Donate the money to charity whether
you get the refund or not.

~~~
alexknowshtml
I donate regularly to donorschoose.org and organize a blood drive for the
Philly tech scene 3-4x a year. I hope you've got a favorite cause, too :)

~~~
SoftwareMaven
The two are orthogonal. App.net is not about charity. Bring that into the
conversation is, IMO, trying to confuse the conversation.

------
bobbles
So the author of this post can't see the reason why anyone would want to pay
for this, and yet backed the project himself anyway?

It reminds me of the people you see who write forums posts like 'I just got my
first Mac, now what?' when the answer is always 'do whatever you wanted it for
in the first place'

~~~
larrys
"yet backed the project himself anyway?"

Per the OP:

"By the way, I put my $50 in out of pure morbid curiosity of what’s under the
hood."

I think you can both think something probably isn't going to work or have
issues with it and support it as a hedge or out of, as he said, "morbid
curiosity". People do this with politics quite frequently.

~~~
philwelch
> People do this with politics quite frequently.

Really? Do you have an example?

"I didn't really think the war in Iraq would go very well, and I don't really
support it; I just wanted to see what would happen."

~~~
pbreit
Probably referring to giving money to candidates who have no chance of
winning. Your bad faith example is ridiculous.

~~~
philwelch
I couldn't think of a non-ridiculous example, so thanks for providing one.
However, your bad faith assumption that I was commenting in bad faith is a
dick move.

------
tsurantino
I don't know if red herring would be the way to call it, but the general
summation that the "success" of App.net is due to marketing (particularly the
out-pouring of Dalton Caldwell to the internet masse) is spot on.

Most people, especially on HN, pointed to the way "Dalton handled things" as
the reason for wanting App.net to succeed. What drives the majority of the
activity on App.net are these continuing discussions of what App.net could be,
how fantastic it could be and what are the various kinds of pains it would
solve. In fact, these very same conversations are as generic and ambiguous as
the way that I describe them. Very few specific points are brought up, but
rather, there are these sweeping discussions taking place on the platform.

I'm kind of curious whether what Dalton is trying to do with app.net is only
capable of being accomplished with Twitter and with Twitter only. This is
considering Twitter's userbase, Twitter's 3rd party app ecosystem, Twitter's
traction and Twitter's history.

My point in saying this is that, it's impossible to recreate all this with
another service (app.net). They are starting from scratch not only in
function, but in context. I'd argue this is what's leading to the ambiguous
dynamic and cloudy future for the service.

~~~
sramsay
I agree that a lot of people are cathecting their desires onto app.net. I'm
probably guilty of that as well (and yes, I coughed up the $50).

But what got me excited was his basic insight -- not entirely novel, I'll
grant -- that any giant social media company selling ads is going to be
beholden to advertisers, and that a social media company that is beholden to
their users might be a different thing.

Lots of things are possible here. The product might suck. They might get
totally overwhelmed. They might not be able to sell it. Their API might end up
being worse than the others (though it doesn't look that way to me).

But people kick in to kickstarter-style things because there's some idea they
want to get behind (e.g. "sword fighting games should be better"), even if it
doesn't pan out. And to be honest, even the OP -- in the throes of his
cynicism -- is obviously experiencing the same sensation.

------
gaelian
But that blot contains within it a pretty obvious potential to be viewed as a
bat though, doesn't it? If it was say, a square with a smaller square inside
it, then it's unlikly anyone would interpret it as a bat. I understand the
purpose of a Rorschach test (dubious as it may be), and I get the point being
made by the OP. But my point is that I have backed App.net because it looks
_enough_ like it has the potential to become something useful to me, in a
number of ways. I don't feel that there's a bait and switch going on here or
that I have been otherwise swindled in some way. And I'm pretty cynical most
of the time.

Free but ad supported isn't the only way online, but one could be forgiven for
thinking it is. I am happy to encourage anyone trying alternatives. I want to
see what social services that don't need to cater to advertisers look like,
and this is one such model. I wonder why some people appear quite threatened
by such.

Time will tell if the service turns out to be a bat or not. I approach with
few preconceptions, I'm happy to wait it out for a while and give the guy the
benefit of the doubt. Seems to me he's doing OK so far.

------
incision
If "reserve your username" wasn't a benefit of pledging, the project wouldn't
even have come close to reaching the funding target.

------
d3ad1ysp0rk
I completely agree with Alex. I read the "App.net is not vaporware" post by
Dalton, but still when watching the video and reading about it all I see is a
vague promise and nothing special. He talks a lot about being "aligned with MY
interests", but how does he know what those are? Its intentionally vague to
avoid discussing hard decisions big companies like Facebook or Twitter need to
make every day, regardless of where their funding comes from.

------
minimaxir
At this point, it seems like there is more people talking about App.net than
people potentially using it.

~~~
AznHisoka
It's going to be a self-fulfilling conspiracy. All this talk about how it's
gonna succeed, and how noone understands it.. sooner or later, some misled
company like FB or Google will just acqui-hire App.net for millions of dollars
because everyone is talking about it.

~~~
minimaxir
Just like with Zynga and OMGPOP/Draw Something, and look how that ended up. :P

~~~
damian2000
Good for OMGPOP...

------
greghinch
I still don't get App.net. There's no possible way anyone outside of this tiny
dev community will actually pay of a service like Twitter, yet there's no way
for it to become actually relevant if it's just another echo chamber for
startup hipsters

~~~
MatthewPhillips
This is zero-sum thinking. App.net doesn't have to be as big as Twitter to be
successful. There are many pay services to compare it to. Metafilter is one.

~~~
greghinch
You're right it wouldn't need to grow to the size of Twitter to be successful,
but I don't see how it would grow beyond the HN set (and just a subset then).
I can't think a single reason anyone would pay for Twitter, when free Twitter
already exists. The only pain point App.net really covers is for 3rd party
devs who want to quit their day jobs to sell Twitter iPhone apps but can't any
more.

~~~
MatthewPhillips
You're ignoring the possibility that it will be different from / better than
Twitter.

------
newobj
Not saying this applies to app.net (because I refuse to pay attention to the
story), but I'd like to coin a phrase that I imagine may become popular soon:
"'strap and dump". There, claim staken.

~~~
charliesome
Sounds similar to: <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pump_and_dump>

~~~
newobj
That was the idea :)

------
gfodor
app.net taught me that in 6 months I need to start another twitter clone,
except this time the price of entry is $1000. I mean, just imagine the signal
to noise ratio there!

------
sergiotapia
I don't find a use for app.net at all. 50$/year for a glorified "curated"
Twitter clone?

------
onedev
What I don't understand is all these people so fervently defending Dalton and
his idea. Should we instead approach app.net with some healthy skepticism?

------
natrius
I've been arguing that the App.net idea won't succeed for the past few days
mainly because I like arguing, especially when I'm right. The App.net
_company_ on the other hand, will probably be fine. They just got ~$800k with
few strings attached. When they realize that the idea isn't great, they'll
probably have enough money left over to change it into something that works.

------
Hominem
I think it is probably going to be pretty low volume. Just for fun I would
like to see an IRC style realtime interface. Treat hashtags (assuming they
have hashtags, I haven't looked past the join page) as channels, read and
write as if it were a realtime chat.

------
paulsutter
I agree with the title but not the article.

App.net is an API-centric twitter. The fact that it costs money or doesn't
have advertising is secondary. Sure, it's probably a requirement for an API-
centric twitter, but the API-centricity is the real actual key.

ps - Dalton, understand why reserved twitter names is for contributors only,
but you might want a feature like _twittername as a sub-namespace for twitter
reserved names that are aliases for real app.net names. Just sayin.

------
nivertech
Developers overpaying for app.net:

Apple iOS Registered Developer - $99/yr - TAM: 365M iOS devices

Google Play for Developers - $25 one-time fee - TAM: 400M Android devices

App.net developer tier - $100/yr - TAM: 10K+ members

------
MarkPNeyer
i looked at the rorsach image on his site out of curiosity.

i saw two people facing away from each other, their index fingers raised as if
to say "nope, we're not part of a rorsach blot"

------
guscost
Boy, a lot of people sure hate this project, don't they?

~~~
slurgfest
I don't hate it, but I still don't see much use for it.

Being free of ads is nice. But it seems to me that the hype for this parallels
the hype for Twitter, which was mostly viciously circular: you have to be on
Twitter because otherwise you'll miss what's happening on Twitter.

Now I am paying $50 to help him build it. I guess that makes sense if you have
business ideas for pitching to the people who feel they have to be on Twitter.
But I will admit to a little discomfort with how much of the interest is based
on projections of everyone else's interest.

~~~
recursive
I don't use twitter much, but I've never seen ads on it. Where are people
seeing ads?

------
vignesh_vs_in
On a side note: The ink blot does look like a bat.

------
dungwiz
Isn't the alpha "what he wants to build"?

------
tkahn6
Can someone give an example of an application that would be built on top of
App.net?

