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

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.