As of today, App.net is a freemium service

[dangero]

I'm going to look at this from their perspective. They have a ton of subscribers right now, but they have 2 problems on the near horizon:

1. They know that a lot of subscribers have abandoned the service and probably won't pay again, but they don't want to have to report that the number of users is declining once those subscriptions start to expire.

2. Acquiring new customers is not happening fast enough to keep critical mass or grow.

This move is to address those two problems. I also think it's a negative signal for the future of the company because I don't think a limited free account will get people to join. While they make clear that they are not a Twitter clone, the concept of following people is a Twitter concept, and you don't have those same limitations on a Twitter free account.

There's something in general that bothers me about App.net. In my career I've found that software engineers rarely are able to climb the org chart like business people are. The reason I've found is that engineers in general have a certain disdain for schmoozing and company politics, so they try to isolate themselves from it. App.net's marketing pitch I feel appeals to that isolationist desire and that's part of the reason it was such a hit.

[eridius]

What's your evidence to support claim #1?

[benatkin]

And the million dollar question is how do I convert my paid account to a free account? Will it happen automatically after the year I got from the KickStarter-like program runs out? Also being able to follow a maximum of 40 people sounds like a feature, not a bug.

[Samuel_Michon]

The pledge was for $50. In October, the annual fee was lowered to $36. As a result, current members received 5 extra months on top of the first year. By the time your credit is up, in February or March 2014, I'm sure you'll be able to change your account to a free plan.

http://blog.app.net/2012/10/01/app-net-pricing-changes/?utm_...

[laureny]

First they charge for it.

Then they make it free.

Then they die.

[bdcravens]

I'm sorry, all of the replies on HN begging for invites are kind of annoying.

[runn1ng]

If you have enough karma for that, downvote all of them.

[orangethirty]

Seems like a move to inject some momentum into a stalled growth.

[juan_juarez]

In the MMORPG world, even handing out free trials, let alone going free to play, is often a sign that a game that's dying. It's a last-ditch effort to keep things going for a few more months.

[trotsky]

So remember this: at its core, App.net is an ad-free, subscription-based platform, a backbone, a dialtone. [1]

I had to go back and find that to make sure I wasn't misremembering. If the free tier includes a cap on the number of people you can follow, has the "we're not just a pay twitter" angle been abandoned?

[1] http://blog.app.net/2012/08/

[runn1ng]

I have given more downvotes in this story comment section than in my whole Hacker News history.

[bdcravens]

Yep, me too.

[perishabledave]

Anyone see the 40 people limit as a problem with this working? I would think limiting connections would limit the usefulness of the service, leading free users to dismiss ADN.

I would like to see ADN become a fully armed and op.. err fully sustainable service (I paid up when they started), but I'm wondering if they should have went further with the free tier.

[eridius]

For a lot of people, the only ADN functionality they really care about is that which replicates Twitter. How do you provide a free tier to these people that doesn't remove any incentive to go paid? Limiting the number of people you can follow seems like a great way to do this.

[Shank]

If anything, it gives incentive to follow only people you truly care about instead of the "everybody follow everybody" model Twitter has. Probably a lot less people willing to follow companies and more following users & interacting with a smaller pool of them.

[supercoder]

Free as in falling.

[mumphster]

Glad to see this. I really liked playing around with their API and even wrote a SMS <-> App.Net gateway client thing (https://github.com/Ell/appdotnet-sms/blob/master/app.py)

[jwarzech]

For those wanting to jump onto App.net backstitch (http://backstit.ch) has over 100 invites to give out.

[mandlar]

Verified. Send a request to their twitter @backstitchapp

[antihero]

Trying backstitch now. So far it just seems to make the internet more boring.

[scott_to_s]

App.net was a great refuge away from all the spammers, and I'm totally happy to pay to keep them out. Very disappointed in this change of policy.

[Avenger42]

You still shouldn't get spammers - if all of a paid member's invites go to people who get blacklisted as spammers shortly afterwards, that member shouldn't get any more invites to offer.

[ChikkaChiChi]

I thought that the paywall was supposed to keep degenerates like me away from those cliques that formed during the early years of the term "blogosphere" Wasn't the whole point of this to make you pay to listen to people like Scoble?

The only people who care about platforms are people like us. The average user doesn't care about App.Net being a "more civilized" Twitter.

[kevingibbon]

When do we deem the App.net experiment a failure?

[trafficlight]

If it's an experiment it's neither a success nor failure. It's just a data point.

[webwanderings]

So this starts a new business model: app.net apps and their paid users prostituting for customers/followers with an invite?

[ineedtosleep]

I haven't followed app.net too closely, but was that fact that "[...] [they] initially conceived of App.net as a freemium service" a secret at all? From the tone of the comments so far, it's like this entire thing is a surprise.

[antoni]

Can the new (free tier) members also invite other people?

[jwarzech]

If anyone is still interested in invites, backstitch (http://backstit.ch) still has a bunch to hand out.

[manish_gill]

The paid angle was the only reason I never bothered with app.net. Seems like I need to ask around for invites now. :)

Anybody got one?