
The Great App.net Mistake - sylvinus
http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2013/08/the-great-app-net-mistake/?mbid=social10983564
======
itafroma
Mat Honan deserves credit for one of the clearest, most concise descriptions
of what App.net is (or intends to be):

> Imagine this. You sign up for Vine, and build up a robust friend network and
> library of videos. But then you try out Instagram’s new video sharing, and
> decide you like its editing features a lot better.

> Normally, this would mean starting over, with no friends and no files. But
> let’s say that both of them were just applications that ran on top of
> App.net. Instead of starting over, when you fired up Instagram for the first
> time, your friends and videos would be there waiting for you. That’s
> App.net. Or at least that’s what it wants to be.

Up until I read those two paragraphs, I couldn't shake the notion that it was
really a Twitter clone that didn't want to be pigeonholed. Now I get it.

~~~
mbesto
Huh? I'm actually more confused.

Doesn't Facebook-connect (and FB apps in general) effectively give you the
ability to buy/rent their network effect already? Thus eliminating the "no
friends and no files" notion?

~~~
benaiah
Yes, but neither Twitter and Facebook are in the "social provider" business -
they're in the ad business. This is why they've had so much friction with
their 3rd-party developer ecosystem. Dalton wants App.net to be a social
utility - providing ownership of social data to the user for a price. There
are no ads, so there's no motivation to screw over developers.

That's the idea, at least.

------
ohazi
From the beginning I've quietly predicted that if App.net is ever going to
succeed, they will eventually end up going with a more traditional business
model where they charge developers for the capacity their applications use (in
my mind, they would end up resembling Firebase).

Dalton will write up some charismatic blog post about why this is the right
move, and how it was really part of the plan all along. Some people will eat
it up; others will call bullshit; and the world will keep turning.

~~~
AznHisoka
Then 4 years later, he'll write a blog post on why selling the company to
Twitter/Google/Facebook will be the best move. And how burnt out he is, and
how he's leaving to pursue "other dreams". And people will congratulate him.

~~~
sliverstorm
Why does this sound so familiar?

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dangero
I'll give App.net one thing:

They get more press on HN than any other irrelevant company in the world.

~~~
yapcguy
They have funding. Journalists like free lunches.

~~~
rdl
I think it's more that they have lower odds of success (at their current
mission) than most startups, but if they're successful, a bigger impact. And
fundamentally it's meta, so more interesting than any given startup -- there's
more of a philosophical argument behind it than just a better designed chat
client or whatever.

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mmuro
In other words, normal people that use Twitter or Instagram still have no clue
what App.net is and the early adopters of App.net will eventually get tired of
it.

~~~
neuroscr
Early adopters aren't tired yet because App.net's continually releasing
interesting updates to the platform. And there's even a great example of 3rd
party developers working together on their system to extend and support one
3rd party developer's chat system (patter). So each developer's project help
retainer interest as well.

So as long as App.net keeps releasing new APIs and developers stay interested
in the platform. I don't think early adopters will get tired.

------
lalc
I get that App.net is supposed about owning your own data, and sure there's a
brief mention of PRISM at the top. But why I would want to write an app for it
in the era of PRISM? How can I trust this notion of a "private cloud?"

What I'm looking for now is more decentralization and encryption than a walled
garden.

------
TruthSHIFT
I read the whole article and never discovered the mistake. Did I miss
something? It sounds like app.net is doing fine.

~~~
zalew
_" Alpha was the first product out of the gate, launched in reaction to
something Twitter did. Subsequently, much development was in building Twitter-
like things. So its little wonder that people associate App.net with, well,
Twitter. And once people form an idea of what a product is, it becomes very
hard to change that idea. "_

~~~
AznHisoka
They wanted to build an open, paid version of the Twitter API/ecosystem. But
the value of the Twitter API lay in the access to their 100 million+ users,
and all the valuable social data generated by those 100 million+ users. No
amount of "open infrastructure", no matter how clever can ever replace that.
It's like buying 1000 data centers in every country, and building an entire
system that can handle a billion concurrent users, and saying "Yeah, we can
take on Facebook with this", then realize the hard part was getting users, not
scaling the infrastructure.

~~~
yapcguy
It's not open. It's closed, proprietary and the boys over at Andressen-
Horowitz are going to want a return on their investment.

~~~
neuroscr
They've embraced open standards: [http://blog.app.net/2013/08/07/response-to-
brennan-novak-par...](http://blog.app.net/2013/08/07/response-to-brennan-
novak-part-ii/)

And they have started releasing client source code:
[https://github.com/appdotnet/](https://github.com/appdotnet/)

a16z is already getting a return, since App.net has been profitable for a
while. It's all gravy since they've made it free to sign up. The user base is
about 10 times bigger than last year. It's true we don't know how many new
users are paying but since that fixed costs are covered, it doesn't really
matter.

------
ewest
The "mistake" is at the end...

'There are no breakout apps. There is no WhatsApp or DrawSomething. App.net
remains a plaything for developers...'

...it certainly took them long enough to get to it.

------
reedlaw
While I appreciate Dalton's insight into incentivizing good behavior by
treating a social network as infrastructure rather than an advertising/media
business, I can't help but feel he's simply asking people to trust App.net
because this time it's really different. What would prevent App.net from
pulling a Twitter? Or from PRISM'ing our data? App.net seems like an
incrementalist approach to a problem that requires more of a revolution. I
wish there was something else with even half the traction of App.net if only
it provided a distributed social network with no central point of failure and
a solid API to build from.

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Camillo
If people don't want their social network to be at the whims of a company, why
not go all the way and adopt the Tent protocol?
[http://tent.io](http://tent.io)

I mean, I can see why from a developer's point of view. Those $30k a month are
enticing. But why would users care?

~~~
wmf
Devil's advocate: Maybe that $30K can pay for good UX which users definitely
care about.

~~~
neuroscr
Funny you should mention that. I feel that crowd-sourcing user interface
development by given an open access to an API will lead to new experiments
with UI/UX.

I believe when Twitter was more open, we saw an explosion of clients and
UI/UX. A couple of these innovations we hadn't easily seen before.

One of the hopes is that the App.net platform continues this experiment.

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damian2000
Say what you want about it, but to class it as a mistake is wrong in my
opinion. Back when Twitter was getting a lot of bad press from developers, the
founder saw a market niche and successfully got backing from lots of people in
that niche ... Enough devs were willing to stump up $50 to get something like
the Twitter API without limits (or the client side ads).

------
alan_cx
I wonder if a part of these site or services is how the name works in the
language. I can "tweet" something I can "google" something, but "app"
something?

Not saying its crucial or 100% important, but I do think the name and it's
ability to work well in English has a lot to d owith success.

Maybe?

~~~
roryokane
The name is not a problem. You can “tweet” and “google” something because
tweeting and googling use products. App.net is not a product, it is a
platform. Similarly, you can’t “facebook” something, you can only “post on
Facebook”, but that’s okay because Facebook is a platform.

