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.
I'll make an equally bold prediction, Tent will fall on its face while App.net powers on into the future.
My reasoning is that it reaches too far without a safety net of a business model. Assuming Dalton is being truthful in his post, he's not cutting prices because he "didn't get traction" he's cutting prices because his business model is out performing his expectations, and rather than go for a higher net early on he's re-investing that margin into growing the user base.
Tent is going 'old school' like the old IETF protocols, that means waiting for adoption, having a variety of implementations, establishing a consensus, moving forward. That works great in a green field situation, but this isn't it. Look at the OpenMoko effort, free Phone OS, build it and they will come? No. Reaching too far without a model to nourish early adoption and growth. Influential? Sure but killer? Not so much.
Dalton has something which Tent does not, people willing to spend money to use it. That is why I think Tent will be a memory long before we see the end of App.net.
A less bold statement will be that they both fall flat on their asses.
The HN/Reddit crowd is still a fairly closed crowd and no one else I know has even really mentioned App.net. Any time I bring up App.net it's met with the same "Twitter clone" skeptics.
I think it's a decent idea, but it's not really solving a hard problem. It's not feeding off of demand for a problem, but off of popularity from the HN hivemind; a crowd known for following trends over execution. I'm just a developer so I don't know much about running a business, but I cannot see how this can be sustainable when tech crowds are prone to move onto the next thing so quickly.
I don't disagree. There are many factors that are outside anyone's control which will have an inordinate effect on the durability of the protocol.
My observation was that App.net has paid users, enough of them to sustain growth apparently. Fundamentally people being paid to provide something do a better job than people who aren't paid to provide something (helps with the inevitable haters) In my experience paid users are a stronger signal than 'vision' or 'reach' as predictors of success.
As I understand it (please correct me if I'm wrong), App.net users pay a yearly subscription to be a part of the service.
We'll get a far better reading of the service once that year is up. In my experience of using annual subscription services/products the hype tends to fizzle out when the core group decide whether their initial investment was worth it. Given its current state I doubt it'll topple its closed competitors in twelve months and I see a large section of its core users ditching it for the next flavour of the week.
It reminds me a lot of MyFootballClub, a website that bought a English football team in the lower leagues with the promise of the community being completely responsible for player contracts, transfers and day-to-day running of the football club. A lot of people coughed up the cash for the site to buy Ebbsfleet United, but after a year most of them realised that what they were sold wasn't necessarily what they got and most decided not to renew. It's not an exact comparison, but I'll give App.net at least another year before I decide whether it's worth my time any more than Twitter.
Well you weren't wrong, its the subject of this blog post that App.net has added a monthly model and they've adjusted prices. I agree with you that if the initial wave of folks jump ship it will have failed to reach critical mass.
I expect it will be all about the client capture, which is to say compelling client experiences based on App.net which will drive new development their way.
I don't argue that Tent will succeed. I'm saying that they think bigger and they are effectively laying the ground work for an open infrastructure, whereby App.net is caught in the moment and works on a product. Think in terms of ideas behind each project. Tent's idea is so damn viable, it will survive Tent's own failure if it comes to that.
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.
Are you suggesting that Jabber is a failure? You're aware that it's the underlying protocol for the massively popular Facebook Chat, as well as GTalk, right?
People are wanting to run away from Twitter, with various options. People aren't running away from MSN, they are running to its replacements such as facebook messenger
Yeah, same here. Suddenly, two or three months ago, HN started talking about how revolutionary this "App.net" is and I still a) don't know what the hell is it (no, their webpage doesn't help either), and b) why did someone use the name "App.net" for social something instead of an app marketplace.
I thought that the whole point of App.net wasn't to build just a Twitter clone, but something that you could build any sort of social service on top of.
Tent is great. Love it.
5-6 loosely integrated infrastructures will replace Facebook, Twitter, G+ (ad model) over time.
App.net is one of those infrastructures.
Please get off the "twitter clone" smackdown ... it's lame.
App.net is a trustworthy "blackbox" which allows ANY social construct. It dovetails with Tent.
People are building Tor concepts, non-Zynga collaborative games, new messaging protocols, etc in App.net ... beyond twitter is easy. Indeed, it's hard to keep up with all the API enhancements, and the new developer ideas. My personal goal inside App.net is a construct which brings down the GFW (firewall) of China. (Im fluent in 中文, 25+ years).
No advertisements, paying developers well.
Integrity about the future ecosystem.
With a $1 million in the bank, one of the best geek hangouts on earth, and world-class integrity ... it ain't going away in months.
You'd be better off predicting that it's a heady time for new social protocols.
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.