

App.net pricing changes - eik3_de
http://blog.app.net/blog/2012/10/01/app-net-pricing-changes/

======
eps
Allow me to make a bold predication - the App.net will be done in a matter of
months. Even if it becomes absolutely free.

The reason is Tent. If Tent drops the ball and doesn't fully execute the idea,
someone else will. Their idea is bigger, better and far better maps onto the
interest of various 3rd parties (such as hosted service providers) that
wouldn't hesitate to support it. Commoditizing the social services is a
_great_ idea with balls and vision. Creating a paid Twitter clone is not.

~~~
wmf
2010: App.net will be done in a matter of months; the reason is Diaspora

2009: App.net will be done in a matter of months; the reason is OneSocialWeb

2005: App.net will be done in a matter of months; the reason is Appleseed

Why is this time different?

~~~
tobylane
Because this is the first year I've heard of App.net and so many things
nowadays fail once its had a moment of popularity? Tent is an improvement on
twitter, which we want. Jabber is an improvement on msn which noone is running
away from.

~~~
s_henry_paulson
I just watched the welcome video, but I still have no idea what app.net is.

I did just listen to some guy tell me why he should get paid for 3 minutes. So
that's something.

~~~
icelancer
That's the _exact_ same experience I had.

------
david_shaw
_> we are dropping the Member price from $50/year to $36/year._

I think this is a great move.

We see a lot of posts on HN about raising the price to increase your userbase,
but $50 was too high for a product in such an early release stage. Great for
those die-hard early adopters (probably the people after whom Dalton was
chasing), but terrible for the everyday Twitter user who is tired of the
horrific signal-to-noise ratio on that service.

That said, my opinion would be that $24/year would be even better for an
annual subscription. $2/mo is a lot of money for a "Twitter clone," but is
cheap enough that it would be easy to convince your friends or colleagues to
sign up. $36 _might_ have hit the price point that I'll give it a shot as a
(relatively) early adopter, but I'm not sure. $5/month, almost double the
annual subscription fee, is too much for a thirty day trial run.

I'm one of the (few?) believers that app.net can really take off. I've tried
Twitter, and while I'm relatively active, I can't help but feel that I'm lost
in the oft-cited "echo chamber." I'm looking for a service with Twitter-like
abilities, strong interaction and an intelligent community, and I think
app.net will (someday) be it.

Congrats to Dalton for lowering the price in what _must_ lead to hugely
increased participation.

~~~
drgath
> I'm looking for a service with Twitter-like abilities, strong interaction
> and an intelligent community, and I think app.net will (someday) be it.

I'm curious... Considering your version of Twitter only consists of who you
follow, why do you believe it would be better if those same people were
elsewhere?

~~~
JeremyMorgan
I think it will be better simply because spammers can sign up for hundreds of
Twitter accounts and spam like crazy. When they get booted they just re-sign
up. Doing so at app.net means paying $36 bucks, far less likely.

That goes for normal people too, when they pay something they tend to respect
it a bit more. Forums have been doing this for years.

~~~
drgath
Right, but none of that has any effect on your own tweet stream (unless you
follow spammers).

If you are talking about searching, the only way search is valuable is if a
service gains critical mass, and the only way that happens is if the barrier
to entry is low enough that enough users join the service, which will include
spammers.

~~~
jdpage
Actually, you can be @-messaged or direct messaged even by people you don't
follow, so spammers still have an in.

~~~
drgath
Spammy @mentions is what blocking is for. Also, you don't get @mention
notifications if you don't follow them (see settings. may or may not be
enabled by default).

You can only DM people where you both follow each other.

~~~
abraham
I get almost a dozen spam mentions or mentions directed at a misspelled
username everyday. That adds a lot of overhead to my usage that get old to the
point where I don't even want to read my mentions steam anymore. Certainly
less frequently than I used to.

~~~
drgath
I'm @derek on Twitter, so I have the same issue. If App.net ever got popular,
these names would have the exact same issue. So, that's not a compelling
reason to switch.

------
epscylonb
The developer plan is still $100?.

I never really understood this, it seems more logical to me to give all
members the developer perks. Most of the users won't use them, and those that
do are helping to promote the app.net service and get new subscribers.

~~~
rexreed
The bar is set somewhat high to limit the proliferation of poor and mediocre
apps, rather than to encourage that. They want "serious" developers (at least
for now...) and the price point is set to weed out lower quality apps that can
hurt the nascent network.

------
cs702
So, growing 100% from 10,000 to 20,000 users allowed App.net to drop annual
pricing from $50 to $36, which implies their expenses grew by only 44% (from
around $500,000 to around $720,000). If expenses continue to grow at similar
fractions of the rate of user growth, App.net should be able to price the
service for around $5 per year with just over a million users. At that pricing
point, App.net would become a compelling economic proposition for many
consumers.

~~~
jmduke
How is $5/year with one million users more compelling than free/year with five
hundred million users?

~~~
ceejayoz
Not having to deal with 300 million spam users?

~~~
hobonumber1
How is it spam if you're responsible for choosing who you listen to vs who you
ignore?

~~~
dannyr
If you want to interact with the community, it's an issue.

Post something on Twitter mentioning "IPad", you'll get a lot of spam accounts
replying. It's hard to engage with other users if you have to comb through the
spam.

------
__abc
I still don't know why anyone outside the techospher will ever pay to use
app.net. Does a material number of users outside the techosphere even care
that some apps are having their access restricted? Does anyone outsidethe
techosphere even know app.net exists?

More importantly, App.net is still a closed box, just like Twitter. App.net
still has to pay the bills, just like Twitter. When faced with the same
decisions in the future, what prevent app.net from making similar decisions as
Twitter?

Will $5 a user per month really cover their costs if they hit scale (I know
they have other revenue streams, but I'm guessing they will have more users
than anything else)?

------
k-mcgrady
I've never thought app.net was a good idea for many reasons but I think this
is a good move. Introducing a monthly plan is the smartest thing they could
have done. With so many yearly plans starting at the same time (when it
launched) they could have seen a big drop in users as people reevaluated their
decision to purchase in a years time.

With the $5 monthly fee I think people are more likely to continue paying for
it - there is no time where they will be forced to reevaluate the value the
service provides.

~~~
samspot
I might be an atypical consumer, but I re-evaluate monthly subscriptions quite
often, usually with a recurring "Cancel X?" reminder on my calendar.

------
ruswick
Does anyone know whether or not App.net has plans to release an official app
for iOS and Android? One of my major apprehensions (besides what I believe to
be a still unjustifiable price) is the fact that most of the current apps
available appear to be shit and cost a non-trivial amount of money.

~~~
rcknight
On iOS I have been using Felix. It may be a non trivial amount of money, but
is excellent (especially for a v1) - very polished.

The other popular option is rivr, which has a slightly different take on
things, and maybe not as pretty as others, but is free.

------
SubFuze
Quick! Someone register <http://ihave36dollars.com/>

~~~
untog
Someone already got <http://ihave5dollars.com>.

------
snilan
The vast majority of people (at this moment in time right now) would never,
ever think of paying for a social network. That would be akin to asking them
to pay for their Gmail account. It's just not going to happen.

------
ben1040
If you buy the $36 (formerly the $50) plan can you get a prorated upgrade to
the $100 developer plan later?

~~~
brianwillis
Instructions on how to do this:
[http://support.app.net/customer/portal/articles/760978-how-d...](http://support.app.net/customer/portal/articles/760978-how-
do-i-upgrade-my-account-from-member-to-developer-)

~~~
ben1040
Awesome, thanks. I feel more inclined to try it out if I know that I won't
have to completely re-buy an account when I inevitably want to tinker around
with the developer side of things.

------
iamdann
> If you are an existing member, you should have received an email from us
> explaining the extra time that has been added to your subscription.

Did anyone else not receive this (yet?)?

~~~
eik3_de
They're working on it, see <https://alpha.app.net/berg/post/597112>

~~~
iamdann
Thanks. Just got mine, too.

------
eik3_de
The current number of users can be found at <http://recentusers.com/>

Homework for the bored hacker: create a graph with user-ID and days. The IDs
are sequential integers. See [https://github.com/appdotnet/api-
spec/blob/master/resources/...](https://github.com/appdotnet/api-
spec/blob/master/resources/users.md#retrieve-a-user)

------
redguava
I don't understand why they are dropping the price. They wanted 10,000 users,
they got over 20,000. Surely that tells them the price wasn't a problem.

Why give up so much revenue when it seems like price isn't holding them back?

~~~
rexreed
It's motivated by the desire to sell a $5/mo plan. Simply put, $50 a year is
not compelling enough for annual subscriptions when you have a monthly plan
that ends up at $60 a year. If they had decided not to offer a monthly plan
(or set the price higher), they would have kept their annual plan at $50.

They see monthly plans as a way to get to a larger market, which explains why
that drove pricing decisions.

------
rbreve
app.net should be free for developers

~~~
k-mcgrady
Why? Developers will make money off it, the whole idea is that developers will
never get screwed by app.net, and they introduced a developer incentive
program to help compensate developers. If you're interested in the platform
how is that not worth $5 per month?

~~~
catenate
It's bad enough I spent $50 to read it. I'm not going to pay $50 more just to
mess around with trying to create an app for it. It should be free with
membership to create an app for it, and charge the $50 when the app has
noticeable traffic.

~~~
k-mcgrady
I didn't realise they charged an extra $50 for developers. The original
comment made it sound like he wanted it 100% free. I agree, they shouldn't be
charging extra on top of the membership.

------
kmfrk
More discussion: <http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4599129>.

------
brianwillis
Combined with the bonus time I got for signing up early, my renewal date is
now in April 2014. That $50 went a long way.

~~~
tisme
I think you will only be able to say how long it went when it expires.

------
kmfrk
Maybe I'm weird, but I like $35.99 much better than $36.

------
markmm
$36 for a twitter clone with < 1% of the users, where do I sign up!!

------
wilfra
I'll sell my account for $35.99.

