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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

by 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.
- citricsquid 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. Sorry if you've explained it elsewhere (I've not been paying much attention) but can you cite/explain that claim? My experience might be different, but most of the "normal people" I know of that use Twitter use it through the apps for their mobile (eg: iPhone, Blackberry) and they use it because that's the device they use, not because the apps are incredible and make Twitter appealing, the Twitter network is appealing. Based on this wouldn't the correct argument be that making Twitter available to everyone easily is what caused Twitter's mainstream success? I think you explained the problem yourself: At day 0 Twitter made no sense to users and Twitter had 0 barriers to entry, all you had to do was sign up! How can app.net get over that problem while charging $50? If I'm correct that ease of access/use is what made Twitter mainstream wouldn't that mean you're doing the exact opposite of what made Twitter successful? I really love the idea and hope it succeeds, but I don't see how you can appeal to anyone outside of the tech circle when charging for access.
- enra 14y ago
  I think the OP means that it's not something non-developers want/care. Even if twitter went mainstream with 3rd developers, it was still apparently something people wanted. PG also advices is that you should make things people want, people as users who use the app. People don't care about the tech or how nice it's for developers. If you build something that people like to use, and have nice API terms, people will use it and developers will develop on top of it. Probably the only reason why people would care is that the apps and the whole network would be better, but that's huge chicken&egg problem. If you look at the state on Windows Phone platform, Microsoft is even paying to people to develop on it, but no-one still care's because there are no users.
tptacek 14y ago
Without implying that I endorse this idea, which I think will fail simply due to network effects, it's a tiresome argument that says App.net doesn't have value to end-users because end-users don't care about ads. It's true, as the argument says, that end-users won't care enough about Twitter's ads over the next year or two to abandon the service for a competitor. The ads themselves are just not that big of a deal. But the need to draw revenue from ads is causing Twitter to make decisions that harm third-party developers. End-users don't care about third-party developers, but they very well might care about applications; if alterna-Twitter enables applications that users care about, the plight of developers or insidiousness of ads won't have to matter, because it'll be the apps themselves that sell the service.
- kyro 14y ago
  I think that works in theory, but you have to look at what will draw users to care about applications. If the network effects aren't there, there's no reason why a user would be drawn to using a given application if the underlying service just isn't worth it. Users have a high tolerance for bad design and I think not paying for a Twitter that displays ads is well within that range of tolerance with the current Twitter app offerings. You'd have to not charge users to get the network effects to kick in, but at that point, you're just a more open Twitter clone and you'll have to scramble to find a revenue source eventually.
- dinkumthinkum 14y ago
  An argument being tiresome doesn't speak to it being wrong, though. One big issue I see here is that, what if Twitter stopped being mean to developers? Eek. What if they also make ads less obtrusive ... Game over?
mbreese 14y ago
I think it will fail, simply because they are asking the wrong question. The answer to Twitter isn't a company that controls a messaging bus (which is what the proposal is looking like). The answer is a federated protocol that will let multiple servers talk to each other. For an email analogy, they are creating a POP protocol, when they should be creating SMTP. That way you would have multiple clients vying for supremacy, but each able to communicate with each other. This would help drive users, since each service could have different features. But unfortunately, it's a bit hard to build a company around a protocol.
deleted 14y ago
[deleted]

by jenius 14y ago

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.
citricsquid 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. Sorry if you've explained it elsewhere (I've not been paying much attention) but can you cite/explain that claim? My experience might be different, but most of the "normal people" I know of that use Twitter use it through the apps for their mobile (eg: iPhone, Blackberry) and they use it because that's the device they use, not because the apps are incredible and make Twitter appealing, the Twitter network is appealing. Based on this wouldn't the correct argument be that making Twitter available to everyone easily is what caused Twitter's mainstream success? I think you explained the problem yourself: At day 0 Twitter made no sense to users and Twitter had 0 barriers to entry, all you had to do was sign up! How can app.net get over that problem while charging $50? If I'm correct that ease of access/use is what made Twitter mainstream wouldn't that mean you're doing the exact opposite of what made Twitter successful? I really love the idea and hope it succeeds, but I don't see how you can appeal to anyone outside of the tech circle when charging for access.
enra 14y ago
I think the OP means that it's not something non-developers want/care. Even if twitter went mainstream with 3rd developers, it was still apparently something people wanted. PG also advices is that you should make things people want, people as users who use the app. People don't care about the tech or how nice it's for developers. If you build something that people like to use, and have nice API terms, people will use it and developers will develop on top of it. Probably the only reason why people would care is that the apps and the whole network would be better, but that's huge chicken&egg problem. If you look at the state on Windows Phone platform, Microsoft is even paying to people to develop on it, but no-one still care's because there are no users.

tptacek 14y ago

Without implying that I endorse this idea, which I think will fail simply due to network effects, it's a tiresome argument that says App.net doesn't have value to end-users because end-users don't care about ads. It's true, as the argument says, that end-users won't care enough about Twitter's ads over the next year or two to abandon the service for a competitor. The ads themselves are just not that big of a deal. But the need to draw revenue from ads is causing Twitter to make decisions that harm third-party developers. End-users don't care about third-party developers, but they very well might care about applications; if alterna-Twitter enables applications that users care about, the plight of developers or insidiousness of ads won't have to matter, because it'll be the apps themselves that sell the service.

kyro 14y ago
I think that works in theory, but you have to look at what will draw users to care about applications. If the network effects aren't there, there's no reason why a user would be drawn to using a given application if the underlying service just isn't worth it. Users have a high tolerance for bad design and I think not paying for a Twitter that displays ads is well within that range of tolerance with the current Twitter app offerings. You'd have to not charge users to get the network effects to kick in, but at that point, you're just a more open Twitter clone and you'll have to scramble to find a revenue source eventually.
dinkumthinkum 14y ago
An argument being tiresome doesn't speak to it being wrong, though. One big issue I see here is that, what if Twitter stopped being mean to developers? Eek. What if they also make ads less obtrusive ... Game over?

mbreese 14y ago

I think it will fail, simply because they are asking the wrong question. The answer to Twitter isn't a company that controls a messaging bus (which is what the proposal is looking like). The answer is a federated protocol that will let multiple servers talk to each other. For an email analogy, they are creating a POP protocol, when they should be creating SMTP. That way you would have multiple clients vying for supremacy, but each able to communicate with each other. This would help drive users, since each service could have different features. But unfortunately, it's a bit hard to build a company around a protocol.

deleted 14y ago

[deleted]