Dalton is very patient, damn frugal, and smart.
His API programming team is off-the-charts talented (essentially 14 Stanford and Carnegie Mellon guys), and here's the important part - they get along very, very well. So, the team is tight, and thinking long term.
They've got a rock-solid cash position, and I wouldn't be surprised for Marc Andreessen to re-invest after 2 years, just to own a piece of this flex infrastructure for such a small $ amount.
Today's announcement is exactly what's next.
Building more ways to "roll your own social network".
The API is amazingly rich - the developers love it.
For example, messaging is far beyond Twitter's broken DM mechanism. The API allows you to DEFINE messaging protocols, and uniquely build a social network with a distinct message system. It's software-definable, via the API.
What's actually happened in the first 5-1/2 months is that the "core API" is finally finished. They've actually unbundled all the core social 2.0 infrastructures.
Watch for more creative "edge API" ideas (like this social Dropbox) to come out, now that the core team of 14 is freeing up to invent.
Let me speak in App.net's defense and say that I'm really enjoying the service. I know that's not really a popular opinion around here, but there it is.
Yes it has a stupid name, yes it has fewer users than twitter/facebook, and yes it's hard to articulate to your non-tech friends why they should spend $36/year on this. But it's becoming a pretty positive place to hang out, and most of the people I care about listening to are there.
In practical terms, this file API means that if you want to post a picture you don't have to use yet another here-today-gone-tomorrow photo sharing service with no revenue model, which I would hope means there's a better chance of your photos sticking around permanently (or at least as permanently as anything ever gets on the web).
> yes it's hard to articulate to your non-tech friends why they should spend $36/year on this.
Actually, I am a tech person, and I like to support App.net. I have not yet seen a reason to use the service.
> ...it's becoming a pretty positive place to hang out, and most of the people I care about listening to are there.
Ok. This is genuinely the first benefit I have heard about using it. Great. Please elaborate more. (I say this as someone looking for reasons to support App.net.)
Curious how this any different than uploading your photos to Facebook and using apps which integrate with the Graph API to access your photos?
I get that App.net charges users money but I'm often baffled by that being misconstrued into users somehow having more control and ownership of their content. Specifically, how's that make my content portable?
Disclaimer: I'm the lead dev/founder of OpenPhoto and our claims are similar but we're open source and let users specify what storage service they want to user with our service.
> Curious how this any different than uploading your photos to Facebook...
Technically it's not: app developers are using another service to handle file storage. However, the difference lies in the promise from app.net that they won't arbitrarily shut off your app because they feel like it or because it somehow competes with their own service. Facebook has introduced fear into their developer ecosystem that they can't be trusted to build a popular product on top of. App.net is saying, "you can trust us, we are an infrastructure company..." like Amazon.
> Specifically, how's that make my content portable?
I suppose it doesn't. Any file storage service has some amount of lock-in, but people can create tools to import/export data to and from different services. Unless you have all of your data stored locally on harddrives in your house, you will have to use some service and trust their level of non-evilness.
OpenPhoto offers S3, Dropbox, and local storage out of the box (which is awesome), but even if I want to switch storage providers, I'm going to incur a switching cost (mostly paid with time to export/import).
As I haven't seen an App.net thread on HN for a while, and i've never really "stumbled" across app.net status updates or mentions, a question to its users: how's it been? Has the community and ecosystem grown? Do you plan to maintain your subscription for the foreseeable future? Do you see value in maintaining a corporate presence on the service?
"Turns out App.net currently has approximately 20,000 users, of which a small minority seemingly dominates the conversation: Basch estimates that 250 users (1.25 percent) have so far accounted for half the posts."
http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2012/09/07/off-slow-start-...
So once every 3-4 days a new active user is born..
What makes this different from Dropbox, which already has an API[1] and paid plans?
> In this world, your photos are held in a data store controlled by you. If you want to try out a new service, you can seamlessly login and choose to give permission to that service, and the photos that you have granted access to would be immediately available.
This looks like exactly the lines the fellows at Unhosted [1] have been thinking along. They're working with the remoteStorage protocol [2].
If you're interested in this notion of decoupling storage from apps, I encourage you to check these out. Dare I hope that app.net is planning to work with this community?
This is interesting. If you made a good API for resumable uploading and had nice oauth and signup procedures as well as apps for mobile ala google drive for accessing the files, I could see some people using this as a file storage backend.
If you get support for the file upload APIs you can ping me as we have considered adding App.net support to OpenPhoto (https://github.com/photo/frontend)
File storage? I feel like App.net should be trying for something a little more ambitious. I'm sure this is a very developer friendly solution to file uploading, but I don't really need a new storage service.
are you kidding ? users will never pay for twitter or facebook. As soon as facebook/twitter is a paid service people will leave it and find for alternatives.
For paid APIs that's a different story but nothing is eternal on the internet.
[+] [-] teawithcarl|13 years ago|reply
They've got a rock-solid cash position, and I wouldn't be surprised for Marc Andreessen to re-invest after 2 years, just to own a piece of this flex infrastructure for such a small $ amount.
Today's announcement is exactly what's next. Building more ways to "roll your own social network". The API is amazingly rich - the developers love it.
For example, messaging is far beyond Twitter's broken DM mechanism. The API allows you to DEFINE messaging protocols, and uniquely build a social network with a distinct message system. It's software-definable, via the API.
What's actually happened in the first 5-1/2 months is that the "core API" is finally finished. They've actually unbundled all the core social 2.0 infrastructures.
Watch for more creative "edge API" ideas (like this social Dropbox) to come out, now that the core team of 14 is freeing up to invent.
[+] [-] brianwillis|13 years ago|reply
Yes it has a stupid name, yes it has fewer users than twitter/facebook, and yes it's hard to articulate to your non-tech friends why they should spend $36/year on this. But it's becoming a pretty positive place to hang out, and most of the people I care about listening to are there.
In practical terms, this file API means that if you want to post a picture you don't have to use yet another here-today-gone-tomorrow photo sharing service with no revenue model, which I would hope means there's a better chance of your photos sticking around permanently (or at least as permanently as anything ever gets on the web).
[+] [-] vineet|13 years ago|reply
Actually, I am a tech person, and I like to support App.net. I have not yet seen a reason to use the service.
> ...it's becoming a pretty positive place to hang out, and most of the people I care about listening to are there.
Ok. This is genuinely the first benefit I have heard about using it. Great. Please elaborate more. (I say this as someone looking for reasons to support App.net.)
[+] [-] jmathai|13 years ago|reply
I get that App.net charges users money but I'm often baffled by that being misconstrued into users somehow having more control and ownership of their content. Specifically, how's that make my content portable?
Disclaimer: I'm the lead dev/founder of OpenPhoto and our claims are similar but we're open source and let users specify what storage service they want to user with our service.
[+] [-] jazzychad|13 years ago|reply
Technically it's not: app developers are using another service to handle file storage. However, the difference lies in the promise from app.net that they won't arbitrarily shut off your app because they feel like it or because it somehow competes with their own service. Facebook has introduced fear into their developer ecosystem that they can't be trusted to build a popular product on top of. App.net is saying, "you can trust us, we are an infrastructure company..." like Amazon.
> Specifically, how's that make my content portable?
I suppose it doesn't. Any file storage service has some amount of lock-in, but people can create tools to import/export data to and from different services. Unless you have all of your data stored locally on harddrives in your house, you will have to use some service and trust their level of non-evilness.
OpenPhoto offers S3, Dropbox, and local storage out of the box (which is awesome), but even if I want to switch storage providers, I'm going to incur a switching cost (mostly paid with time to export/import).
[+] [-] kmfrk|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] CaveTech|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] heyitsnick|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] lloeki|13 years ago|reply
Very pleasant. The general tone is really friendly and engaging, and feels much less one-way, producer-consumer than Twitter.
> Has the community and ecosystem grown?
Yes. Not slow but not blitzkrieg either, just steadily.
> Do you plan to maintain your subscription for the foreseeable future?
Yes, definitely.
> Do you see value in maintaining a corporate presence on the service?
Not applicable for me.
[+] [-] Camillo|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ErikHuisman|13 years ago|reply
"Turns out App.net currently has approximately 20,000 users, of which a small minority seemingly dominates the conversation: Basch estimates that 250 users (1.25 percent) have so far accounted for half the posts." http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2012/09/07/off-slow-start-...
So once every 3-4 days a new active user is born..
[+] [-] graue|13 years ago|reply
> In this world, your photos are held in a data store controlled by you. If you want to try out a new service, you can seamlessly login and choose to give permission to that service, and the photos that you have granted access to would be immediately available.
All of this is already possible.
[1]: https://www.dropbox.com/developers/reference/api
[+] [-] charlieok|13 years ago|reply
If you're interested in this notion of decoupling storage from apps, I encourage you to check these out. Dare I hope that app.net is planning to work with this community?
[+] [-] kzahel|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jdolitsky|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jmathai|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] habosa|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] adjin|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] camus|13 years ago|reply