First Month on app.net – Charts and Stats

First Month on app.net – Charts and Stats(diegobasch.com)

57 points by dbuthay 13 years ago | 26 comments

shell0x 13 years ago |

I don't get the point on app.net. They seem to be an alternative to twitter, just without ads and user funded. Ok, so far, but why should a developer trust their plattform more than any other one? App.net isn't open source like status.net/identi.ca, so if they close developers will be still screwed. I don't see any reason why I should pay money to finance a closed source plattform, sorry. Also the most people are on twitter, so it wouldn't make any sense to change to app.net. Maybe I'm wrong about it, but I don't trust them more than Twitter.

diego 13 years ago | |

Why do you need to trust them? It's a commercial relationship like any other. I don't even think about the issue of trust.

For me it's very simple: I pay to have fun with the service. I've spent more time playing with app.net in the past month than I spent watching Netflix in the past year. How many people like me are out there? Who knows, that's the X million dollar question.

To your second point, Twitter is not Facebook. You cannot replace Facebook easily because you'd have to convince your friends and family to go elsewhere. On Twitter I follow a bunch of interesting people who tweet news, links, thoughts. I don't need the same people to be at app.net. As long as there are 100-200 interesting and active people for me to follow / interact with, that's good enough.

jmathai 13 years ago | | |

Their ethos is trust. From their site:

> Our most valuable asset is your trust.

That's always been my issue with app.net. I don't think they're positioning themselves to deliver on their own brand promise. It's an entirely separate issue than if they'll be successful and how much value their users derive.

But that really has me wonder...what the hell?

pvidler 13 years ago | |

For developers, I suspect it's less about trust and more about providing something of value to a group of people who are already known to be willing to pay for such things.

dave1010uk 13 years ago |

Does anyone know how these numbers compare to identi.ca / status.net?

Has everyone who has signed up for app.net used status.net and found it lacking; have people not heard of status.net or does app.net do something I don't know about?

diego 13 years ago | |

It seems that the people who paid for app.net (myself included) are very motivated to get their money's worth. There's a group of people who seem to be posting all the time. Some have thousands of posts already.

I spent $100 to have developer access. For me it's fun to observe the community develop, and see what interesting insights I can get from the data. In my case I don't feel the money I paid is significant. The time I spend online is the real cost. I suspect it's the same for many other people there.

jmspring 13 years ago | |

Every time app.net is mentioned, I see identi.ca/status.net mentioned, yet I know no one using that platform. Rather than just asking how things compare, can anyone present/offer insight into who/how many people are using identi.ca/status.net?

There is certainly overlap, but asking about comparisons or why isn't something used without providing examples as to why they should be used doesn't help those of us not wholly familiar with them.

sjs382 13 years ago |

Stats are great and all, but what is the use of App.net?

Last week during Hurricane Isaac, most of NOLA was without power, our street was flooded, and my only communication with the outside world was via text messaging and Twitter. Twitter kept us up-to-date re: storm projections, conditions of the city, and everything else we needed to know. I did some searching of App.net for Isaac-related posts, and didn't find anything useful.

This is the moment that I realized that App.net is (at the moment) nothing more than a toy and novelty. Twitter is a UTILITY and it was indispensable during Isaac.

Even immediately post-Isaac, it was how we learned what stores (and bars) were open, where to get gas, and the status of roads and the utility companies. Hell, we even tweeted photos of road hazards to @nolaready and they were taken care of.

I'm a backer of App.net and I hope this reverses, but the current state is very clear.

smartician 13 years ago |

20k users -- does that mean they've broken the $1 million annual revenue threshold? Nice!

Tichy 13 years ago |

Is it possible to read app.net posts without being a member? Is there a firehose of tweets? If people need to pay to read tweets it would be really counterproductive...

diego 13 years ago | |

Yes, for example:

https://alpha.app.net/global/

I don't think you can read the posts programmatically (including metadata) unless you pay for developer access to the api.

Tichy 13 years ago | | |

Thanks! It reminds me of Twitter a lot, somehow :-)

shamsensei 13 years ago |

i say we take this discussion on at app.net. The thread view there is the key difference here :)

cyarvin 13 years ago |

I already see spam (with t.co links) on the alpha.app.net page. Surely nuking spam and spammers shouldn't be hard for a paid, centralized service like app.net?

Identi.ca also appears to be full of spam. Basically nothing will kill a public space faster or deader. There is a certain set of users who will stick around in a chat room/feed/forum/whatever full of spambots, but it's not a high-quality audience and doesn't tend to grow much.

MatthewPhillips 13 years ago | |

That's not spam, that's people cross-posting from Twitter.

markmm 13 years ago |

I was dismissive at first of app.net, but I think its great they are getting some build up of users. To have an alternative to Twitter can only be a good thing.