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

zalew 13y ago
"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. "
- andrewflnr 13y ago
  To be more explicit, the mistake is on the part of the people with the wrong idea of what App.net is. At least that's how I took it.
  - recursive 13y ago
    Why is the idea that app.net is a paid version of twitter so pervasive? That's what I thought until today. Perhaps it's my fault for being wrong, but if that particular mistake is so widespread, perhaps app.net is also making a mistake by not addressing it harder.
    - aaronbrethorst 13y ago
      Why is the idea that app.net is a paid version of twitter so pervasive? Because this is exactly what it was laid out to be when it was first announced. http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/12/app-net-reaches-its-500k-funding-goal-with-38-hours-to-spare/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/12/app-net-reaches-its-500k-fu...
- MatthewPhillips 13y ago
  It is like Twitter, except it's like Twitter circa 2008/2009. It is what (many of) the early Twitter users though Twitter was and what they wanted it to become. The problem is that 1) Most people weren't around during those times. 2) Those who were have either forgotten what it was like or have come to terms with what Twitter is now.
- pavedwalden 13y ago
  That is a shame. 90% of the criticisms I've seen of App.net were mocking it for being 'an open source twitter' and completely ignored its ambitions to encompass general social network features.
  - johns 13y ago
    Or that it's not open source.
    - cbhl 13y ago
      It's not like there aren't F/OSS Twitter clones... just look at StatusNet. Or Pump.io, which (AFAICT) is a Facebook/Google+/Diaspora clone.
    - neuroscr 13y ago
      Are open standards not important? Just the source? They have been starting to release the source code of the client applications they've built: https://github.com/appdotnet/ https://github.com/appdotnet/
- AznHisoka 13y ago
  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.
  - fusiongyro 13y ago
    Why do I have to read this comment every time App.net gets brought up? Is every conversation about App.net doomed to turn into a debate about whether it will succeed, and if not why?
    - corin_ 13y ago
      In a discussion about an article written about whether App.net will succeed, that seems like a pretty logical thing to be talking about, no? It's not like he hijacked something completely unrelated and changed the topic.
      - fusiongyro 13y ago
        I suppose that's fair, but I still find this line of thought tiresome. At least the article is arguing that App.net's problem is that it's too much like Twitter when it could be used for more, rather than the usual tired argument that Twitter's success is simply network effects, therefore App.net cannot succeed. After all, as a business, App.net is already a success; it doesn't need runaway growth to be sustained.
  - yapcguy 13y ago
    It's not open. It's closed, proprietary and the boys over at Andressen-Horowitz are going to want a return on their investment.
    - 13y ago
- neuroscr 13y ago
  It was a big mistake. Clinging on to the twitter model gave them something tangible to model after and improve on but the result of that is the API is largely for micro-blogging. They have some file storage now but the primitives for a broad web application building platform aren't there yet. So from reading the API from a developers point of view, it's obvious that it's for micro-blogging. It takes a lot of imagination and effort to repurpose their API into something new.

zalew 13y ago

"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. "

andrewflnr 13y ago
To be more explicit, the mistake is on the part of the people with the wrong idea of what App.net is. At least that's how I took it.
- recursive 13y ago
  Why is the idea that app.net is a paid version of twitter so pervasive? That's what I thought until today. Perhaps it's my fault for being wrong, but if that particular mistake is so widespread, perhaps app.net is also making a mistake by not addressing it harder.
  - aaronbrethorst 13y ago
    Why is the idea that app.net is a paid version of twitter so pervasive? Because this is exactly what it was laid out to be when it was first announced. http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/12/app-net-reaches-its-500k-funding-goal-with-38-hours-to-spare/ http://techcrunch.com/2012/08/12/app-net-reaches-its-500k-fu...
MatthewPhillips 13y ago
It is like Twitter, except it's like Twitter circa 2008/2009. It is what (many of) the early Twitter users though Twitter was and what they wanted it to become. The problem is that 1) Most people weren't around during those times. 2) Those who were have either forgotten what it was like or have come to terms with what Twitter is now.
pavedwalden 13y ago
That is a shame. 90% of the criticisms I've seen of App.net were mocking it for being 'an open source twitter' and completely ignored its ambitions to encompass general social network features.
- johns 13y ago
  Or that it's not open source.
  - cbhl 13y ago
    It's not like there aren't F/OSS Twitter clones... just look at StatusNet. Or Pump.io, which (AFAICT) is a Facebook/Google+/Diaspora clone.
  - neuroscr 13y ago
    Are open standards not important? Just the source? They have been starting to release the source code of the client applications they've built: https://github.com/appdotnet/ https://github.com/appdotnet/
AznHisoka 13y ago
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.
- fusiongyro 13y ago
  Why do I have to read this comment every time App.net gets brought up? Is every conversation about App.net doomed to turn into a debate about whether it will succeed, and if not why?
  - corin_ 13y ago
    In a discussion about an article written about whether App.net will succeed, that seems like a pretty logical thing to be talking about, no? It's not like he hijacked something completely unrelated and changed the topic.
    - fusiongyro 13y ago
      I suppose that's fair, but I still find this line of thought tiresome. At least the article is arguing that App.net's problem is that it's too much like Twitter when it could be used for more, rather than the usual tired argument that Twitter's success is simply network effects, therefore App.net cannot succeed. After all, as a business, App.net is already a success; it doesn't need runaway growth to be sustained.
- yapcguy 13y ago
  It's not open. It's closed, proprietary and the boys over at Andressen-Horowitz are going to want a return on their investment.
  - 13y ago
neuroscr 13y ago
It was a big mistake. Clinging on to the twitter model gave them something tangible to model after and improve on but the result of that is the API is largely for micro-blogging. They have some file storage now but the primitives for a broad web application building platform aren't there yet. So from reading the API from a developers point of view, it's obvious that it's for micro-blogging. It takes a lot of imagination and effort to repurpose their API into something new.