8 ms·

App.net 3rd-party revshare proposal

43 points by revorad 14y ago

MatthewPhillips 14y ago
I think this is a bad idea. It's hard enough to come up with a business plan that is successful for yourself, you can't possibly come up with one that will be successful for all 3rd parties as well. Central Planning is never a good idea. In this particular instance you've set it up so that having users use 3rd party clients/services takes money away from you, disincentivizing you from treating 3rd parties well.
- dalton 14y ago
  If this works, the idea of having no first party clients is on the table. I am having an open discussion to figure this out. I just hope people are constructive.
  - MatthewPhillips 14y ago
    So, in this scenario every user will be using a 3rd party client. This complicates things for a couple of reasons: 1) App.net's income per user is now 50% of the subscription price. You have to make that work financially for you. 2) The 3rd party's income per user is less than 50%. The most profitable 3rd party is going to be the client, so you've created a situation where interesting uses of the API that don't require user interaction are less profitable. I want your platform to be successful, but I don't think this will contribute to it. You're going to spend a lot of time policing 3rd parties' attempt at gaming the system, which means time your not spending making the platform better. This is a rabbit hole you don't want to fall into.
  - dinkumthinkum 14y ago
    I think no first party client is incredibly confusing for people.
54mf 14y ago
Now this is interesting. I've had an RSS reader/platform on the backburner for a while, and was considering a similar revshare concept. It seems like a really great idea, especially for a new platform. Nothing like direct financial incentive to attract third-party devs.
the_unknown 14y ago
As an end-user of these services will I be able to identify which developers should receive my payment? For instance if I run two apps that use their service - a game that I play every few days and a social aggregator that runs in the background all day long but that I generally I would like to define that the game is more "important" to me in terms of dollars than the app is. Perhaps the game is worth 90% of my payment and the app 5% and some random service that I tried and abandoned should get the other 5%
- dinkumthinkum 14y ago
  I think this would just complicate things greatly. I also don't really see much benefit for the end-user to making such distinctions.
TheBiv 14y ago
So the proposal is that I make more money if I make the best stuff...I like it...I just think that you have to define what "best" means pretty early or else I, as a developer, will come up with my own definition of "best" and it will probably look similar to my usage statistics...
jenius 14y ago
Sadly, this project is going to fail - it won't even be funded. I understand the concept behind it, but for me app.net is like socialism - in theory it's great but in reality it just won't work. App.net is not created based on what people think and how they act, but rather on frustration with being a 3rd party developer. Onboarding the developer community to this shouldn't be difficult, and has already worked. But that's not what's important - what's important is how it looks to some random person. Let's simulate. --------------------------------------------- 'Hey, you should try app.net' 'Oh yeah? What is it?' 'It's the same thing as twitter, except you have to pay $50 to get on it, and it's nowhere near as popular as twitter, yet. But it has no ads, and they don't screw over third party devs.' 'Sounds questionable to me. I don't care about 3rd party developers, and not having an occasional ad pop up in my stream is not worth $50 to me. Especially if twitter is way more popular and useful anyway.' 'Well, shit.' --------------------------------------------- This is not going to take off with the support of the dev community alone - it needs to appeal to normal people. And right now, everything about it does not. The name, the website, the pitch, the fees - none of it makes any sense to anyone but a dev.
- dalton 14y ago
  Twitter in its early days made zero sense to end-users, and it was only through the effort of third party developers that it went mainstream. I am getting tired of arguing with people about this. We will just have to agree to disagree. I am willing to take the risk of failure because I saw this exact developer-centric approach work before. UPDATE: Regarding the comments below, if you read my original announcement post, I made the point that this is architected by be financially sustainable on a critical mass, small user-base: http://daltoncaldwell.com/an-audacious-proposal http://daltoncaldwell.com/an-audacious-proposal I cited this Paul Graham post discussing the strength of a core geeky userbase: http://paulgraham.com/ambitious.html http://paulgraham.com/ambitious.html Let's say that someone followed PGs advice on that proposal. Wouldn't the same criticisms about not appealing to normies also apply?
  - jenius 14y ago
    I didn't mean to argue with you about this Dalton, just to offer my shot at a reason why it's not taking off like you wanted it to. I am in support of what you're doing and hope it's successful, on a personal note. Twitter in the beginning: "Post what you are doing & see what people you like are doing in 140 characters or less." This is very tangible and makes plenty of sense to normal people, immediately. This is just something to think about, hope you don't take it as an attack or an argument. I'm clearly not the only one who has this opinion - it might be worth mulling over humanizing the project even if just a little bit.
dalton 14y ago
Hi, if you would like to provide constructive feedback on this, please email me, or write a blogpost, or talk to us on github here: https://github.com/appdotnet/api-spec https://github.com/appdotnet/api-spec
peterwiese 14y ago
i think you should add a moral support button. because right now i wouldn't pledge you $50 but i generally like the idea and i might join if this really takes off (and seems to offer me some unique value that i won't get elsewhere for free). i think showing the number of people that think like me somewhere on your page might encourage more developers to pledge something.
- currywurst 14y ago
  I agree! I can really imagine dalton's internal struggle now as he tries to validate the idea in the real world. But I'm more impressed at the way this experiment is set up. @dalton: Maybe you should add the infamous "Kudos" button to the join.app.net site ;) !
jazzychad 14y ago
A friend recently asked me what it would take for me to go back to developing on Twitter. I said, "Finally release the 3rd-party rev-share program they were promising back in 2009." They will never do this now with their current heading, but it would make a lot of sense. If they are becoming a media/ad company, they need as much distribution as possible, so let the ads run free outside their own walls. For Twitter this would make a ton of sense because the rev-share would be based on impressions of ads, clicks, etc. The method to determine the dev's cut is straightforward and a known system (a la AdSense). For App.net, as you correctly pointed out, the definition of "rev-share based on usage" is insanely complicated and the maximum value per user per month is capped at $2.08 (in the 50/50 scenario). If I create a premium app.net client, would I still want to charge for it (e.g. iphone app)... would I even be allowed to charge for it in accordance w/ app.net TOS? The idea of no first-party apps competing for user revenue is the ultimate dream of a platform that enables a 3rd party dev ecosystem. Sadly, many such platforms that began with that promise ultimately went back on it, much to devs' dismay. Much care would need to be taken to stick to this decision over the long term if this is decided up front. Aside: I'm peeved that Svbtle doesn't allow comments. All the feedback you get must be out-of-band, and it creates extra steps for the people that read your posts.
kyro 14y ago
I can't help but feel that you're severely underestimating the network effects and momentum needed to make a service like this useful to someone. If Twitter had a price barrier, I doubt they'd have 5% of the user base that they do now. I get where you're coming from, but at the end of the day, the cost of scrolling through a Twitter/FB ad in my feed is far, far less than buying my way into a social network that at least 90% of my friends won't use because of the price alone. Even if you get geeks on board as your early adopters, you're still going to miss out on the much larger non-geek demographic that make these social networks what they are, even to geeks. Remember, you're going for a social tool here, and so you'll need to make it easy for a person's entire social circle to join else it'll be rendered useless. If you're trying to position this as dev-centric alone and to foster a github-like community around dev topics, then I could see this working. But as a catch-all social network, I don't think this will take off. I commend you for trying, of course. Definitely a lot gutsier than I am to take on such a bold endeavor.
- dinkumthinkum 14y ago
  I think I agree with you. The more I look at it, I just don't see it. When I first heard about it, I had this feeling I really wanted it to succeed but then I didn't know what really way. Then I found out it is like this Twitter alternative, but I don't like Twitter. I don't like the concept of Twitter, I don't like its effect on society, on language, on communication. So, whatever, but I don't know if I would like this. Nevertheless, it could be, if it worked, a good step in a particular direction for social networking. However, again, I agree, I don't see how it could work. But you know, it might be good to have an example of someone actually trying this and failing, so we don't have to just hypothesize that it will fail?
brackishlake 14y ago
"Would you pay to use Twitter?" "Never." "Would you pay for App.net? It's like Twitter." [You can fill out this one for yourself.]
shasty 14y ago
How much dalton caldwell spam is HN going to allow?
melvinmt 14y ago
Eventually all those 3rd party developers want a bigger piece of the app.net revenue pie and that means they will resort to, yes, ads.

43 points by revorad 14y ago

I think this is a bad idea. It's hard enough to come up with a business plan that is successful for yourself, you can't possibly come up with one that will be successful for all 3rd parties as well. Central Planning is never a good idea. In this particular instance you've set it up so that having users use 3rd party clients/services takes money away from you, disincentivizing you from treating 3rd parties well.

dalton 14y ago
If this works, the idea of having no first party clients is on the table. I am having an open discussion to figure this out. I just hope people are constructive.
- MatthewPhillips 14y ago
  So, in this scenario every user will be using a 3rd party client. This complicates things for a couple of reasons: 1) App.net's income per user is now 50% of the subscription price. You have to make that work financially for you. 2) The 3rd party's income per user is less than 50%. The most profitable 3rd party is going to be the client, so you've created a situation where interesting uses of the API that don't require user interaction are less profitable. I want your platform to be successful, but I don't think this will contribute to it. You're going to spend a lot of time policing 3rd parties' attempt at gaming the system, which means time your not spending making the platform better. This is a rabbit hole you don't want to fall into.
- dinkumthinkum 14y ago
  I think no first party client is incredibly confusing for people.

54mf 14y ago

Now this is interesting. I've had an RSS reader/platform on the backburner for a while, and was considering a similar revshare concept. It seems like a really great idea, especially for a new platform. Nothing like direct financial incentive to attract third-party devs.

the_unknown 14y ago

As an end-user of these services will I be able to identify which developers should receive my payment? For instance if I run two apps that use their service - a game that I play every few days and a social aggregator that runs in the background all day long but that I generally I would like to define that the game is more "important" to me in terms of dollars than the app is. Perhaps the game is worth 90% of my payment and the app 5% and some random service that I tried and abandoned should get the other 5%

dinkumthinkum 14y ago
I think this would just complicate things greatly. I also don't really see much benefit for the end-user to making such distinctions.

TheBiv 14y ago

So the proposal is that I make more money if I make the best stuff...I like it...I just think that you have to define what "best" means pretty early or else I, as a developer, will come up with my own definition of "best" and it will probably look similar to my usage statistics...

jenius 14y ago

Sadly, this project is going to fail - it won't even be funded. I understand the concept behind it, but for me app.net is like socialism - in theory it's great but in reality it just won't work. App.net is not created based on what people think and how they act, but rather on frustration with being a 3rd party developer. Onboarding the developer community to this shouldn't be difficult, and has already worked. But that's not what's important - what's important is how it looks to some random person. Let's simulate. --------------------------------------------- 'Hey, you should try app.net' 'Oh yeah? What is it?' 'It's the same thing as twitter, except you have to pay $50 to get on it, and it's nowhere near as popular as twitter, yet. But it has no ads, and they don't screw over third party devs.' 'Sounds questionable to me. I don't care about 3rd party developers, and not having an occasional ad pop up in my stream is not worth $50 to me. Especially if twitter is way more popular and useful anyway.' 'Well, shit.' --------------------------------------------- This is not going to take off with the support of the dev community alone - it needs to appeal to normal people. And right now, everything about it does not. The name, the website, the pitch, the fees - none of it makes any sense to anyone but a dev.

dalton 14y ago
Twitter in its early days made zero sense to end-users, and it was only through the effort of third party developers that it went mainstream. I am getting tired of arguing with people about this. We will just have to agree to disagree. I am willing to take the risk of failure because I saw this exact developer-centric approach work before. UPDATE: Regarding the comments below, if you read my original announcement post, I made the point that this is architected by be financially sustainable on a critical mass, small user-base: http://daltoncaldwell.com/an-audacious-proposal http://daltoncaldwell.com/an-audacious-proposal I cited this Paul Graham post discussing the strength of a core geeky userbase: http://paulgraham.com/ambitious.html http://paulgraham.com/ambitious.html Let's say that someone followed PGs advice on that proposal. Wouldn't the same criticisms about not appealing to normies also apply?
- jenius 14y ago
  I didn't mean to argue with you about this Dalton, just to offer my shot at a reason why it's not taking off like you wanted it to. I am in support of what you're doing and hope it's successful, on a personal note. Twitter in the beginning: "Post what you are doing & see what people you like are doing in 140 characters or less." This is very tangible and makes plenty of sense to normal people, immediately. This is just something to think about, hope you don't take it as an attack or an argument. I'm clearly not the only one who has this opinion - it might be worth mulling over humanizing the project even if just a little bit.

dalton 14y ago

Hi, if you would like to provide constructive feedback on this, please email me, or write a blogpost, or talk to us on github here: https://github.com/appdotnet/api-spec https://github.com/appdotnet/api-spec

peterwiese 14y ago

i think you should add a moral support button. because right now i wouldn't pledge you $50 but i generally like the idea and i might join if this really takes off (and seems to offer me some unique value that i won't get elsewhere for free). i think showing the number of people that think like me somewhere on your page might encourage more developers to pledge something.

currywurst 14y ago
I agree! I can really imagine dalton's internal struggle now as he tries to validate the idea in the real world. But I'm more impressed at the way this experiment is set up. @dalton: Maybe you should add the infamous "Kudos" button to the join.app.net site ;) !

jazzychad 14y ago

A friend recently asked me what it would take for me to go back to developing on Twitter. I said, "Finally release the 3rd-party rev-share program they were promising back in 2009." They will never do this now with their current heading, but it would make a lot of sense. If they are becoming a media/ad company, they need as much distribution as possible, so let the ads run free outside their own walls. For Twitter this would make a ton of sense because the rev-share would be based on impressions of ads, clicks, etc. The method to determine the dev's cut is straightforward and a known system (a la AdSense). For App.net, as you correctly pointed out, the definition of "rev-share based on usage" is insanely complicated and the maximum value per user per month is capped at $2.08 (in the 50/50 scenario). If I create a premium app.net client, would I still want to charge for it (e.g. iphone app)... would I even be allowed to charge for it in accordance w/ app.net TOS? The idea of no first-party apps competing for user revenue is the ultimate dream of a platform that enables a 3rd party dev ecosystem. Sadly, many such platforms that began with that promise ultimately went back on it, much to devs' dismay. Much care would need to be taken to stick to this decision over the long term if this is decided up front. Aside: I'm peeved that Svbtle doesn't allow comments. All the feedback you get must be out-of-band, and it creates extra steps for the people that read your posts.

kyro 14y ago

I can't help but feel that you're severely underestimating the network effects and momentum needed to make a service like this useful to someone. If Twitter had a price barrier, I doubt they'd have 5% of the user base that they do now. I get where you're coming from, but at the end of the day, the cost of scrolling through a Twitter/FB ad in my feed is far, far less than buying my way into a social network that at least 90% of my friends won't use because of the price alone. Even if you get geeks on board as your early adopters, you're still going to miss out on the much larger non-geek demographic that make these social networks what they are, even to geeks. Remember, you're going for a social tool here, and so you'll need to make it easy for a person's entire social circle to join else it'll be rendered useless. If you're trying to position this as dev-centric alone and to foster a github-like community around dev topics, then I could see this working. But as a catch-all social network, I don't think this will take off. I commend you for trying, of course. Definitely a lot gutsier than I am to take on such a bold endeavor.

dinkumthinkum 14y ago
I think I agree with you. The more I look at it, I just don't see it. When I first heard about it, I had this feeling I really wanted it to succeed but then I didn't know what really way. Then I found out it is like this Twitter alternative, but I don't like Twitter. I don't like the concept of Twitter, I don't like its effect on society, on language, on communication. So, whatever, but I don't know if I would like this. Nevertheless, it could be, if it worked, a good step in a particular direction for social networking. However, again, I agree, I don't see how it could work. But you know, it might be good to have an example of someone actually trying this and failing, so we don't have to just hypothesize that it will fail?

brackishlake 14y ago

"Would you pay to use Twitter?" "Never." "Would you pay for App.net? It's like Twitter." [You can fill out this one for yourself.]

shasty 14y ago

How much dalton caldwell spam is HN going to allow?

melvinmt 14y ago

Eventually all those 3rd party developers want a bigger piece of the app.net revenue pie and that means they will resort to, yes, ads.