{"id":2850,"date":"2017-01-13T08:46:29","date_gmt":"2017-01-13T08:46:29","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.rsoftsolution.com\/blog\/app-net-the-ambitious-project-to-build-a-better-twitter-is-finally-dead.html"},"modified":"2017-01-13T08:46:29","modified_gmt":"2017-01-13T08:46:29","slug":"app-net-the-ambitious-project-to-build-a-better-twitter-is-finally-dead","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.rbsitsoftwaresolution.in\/blog\/app-net-the-ambitious-project-to-build-a-better-twitter-is-finally-dead.html","title":{"rendered":"App.net, the ambitious project to build a better Twitter, is finally dead"},"content":{"rendered":"


\n<\/p>\n

Aiming for the stars and not quite making it, the ambitious App.net has finally officially shut down.<\/a> Its timely rise and fall comes as highly symbolic as\u00a0its once rival, Twitter, continues to struggle, years later, with\u00a0monetization, content management and harassment.<\/p>\n

Today\u2019s announcement of its closure isn\u2019t hugely surprisingly since App.net had been in \u201cmaintenance\u00a0mode\u201d since May 2014. CEO Dalton Caldwell and his co-founder Bryan Berg put the social network on autopilot after it failed to generate the revenue necessary to support a full-time staff. Caldwell subsequently took\u00a0on a new role as a partner at Y Combinator.<\/p>\n

\"Is<\/p>\n

Dalton Caldwell, co-founder and CEO of App.net<\/p>\n

To the team\u2019s credit, App.net grew organically out of a successful crowdfunding campaign that surpassed $750,000 in pledges.<\/a>\u00a0A strong community\u00a0bought into the\u00a0promise\u00a0of an ad-free, subscription-based, Twitter clone that would remain friendly to developers and users, no matter how big it got.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately for everyone, the network just didn\u2019t make money. By the time App.net got off the ground in 2012, Twitter\u00a0already had six years of momentum and user growth.<\/p>\n

By 2013, App.net needed institutional capital to make the fight competitive.\u00a0Andreessen Horowitz \u00a0bankrolled<\/a> a $2.5 million venture round for the company on its own.<\/p>\n

App.net sought to distance itself from Twitter by focusing in on\u00a0building just the bare bones of a social platform that developers could build on top of.\u00a0Caldwell and Berg toyed around with a number of different monetization models from slightly free to even\u00a0less free.<\/p>\n

The company will finally be laid to rest on\u00a0March 14th, 2017, when the ability to signup and renew subscriptions will end.\u00a0Caldwell did note in a blog post that the code for App.net will be open-sourced. After the 14th, all user data will cease to exist.<\/p>\n

Caldwell gave the following reflection on the App.net blog:<\/p>\n

\n

Ultimately, we failed to overcome the chicken-and-egg issue between application developers and\u00a0user adoption of those applications. We envisioned\u00a0a pool of differentiated, fast-growing third-party\u00a0applications would sustain the numbers needed to make the business work. Our initial developer adoption exceeded expectations, but\u00a0that initial\u00a0excitement didn\u2019t\u00a0ultimately translate into a big enough pool of customers\u00a0for those developers. This was a foreseeable risk, but one we felt was worth taking.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

To onlookers in 2017, the project brings memories of simpler times \u2014 before the infamy of fake news, before Snapchat\u00a0selling hardware was cool and before the platformization\u00a0of social networks become commonplace.\u00a0Today, there is still energy in the notion of improving the quality of our social networks. People still want greater privacy and control, but few are willing to pay for it.<\/p>\n

App.net might have had a better run if\u00a0it more fully differentiated itself from Twitter. With so much in common, Twitter suffocated it, leaving almost no room for user acquisition or market cannibalization. With more creative models, Snapchat and Instagram steamed ahead, while App.net didn\u2019t.<\/p>\n

As content monetization continues to grow in importance for Twitter and others alike, there\u2019s perhaps no better time to reflect on the lessons of App.net. Now isn\u2019t the time to further divide our social networks into paid and unpaid communities, it isn\u2019t the time for some folks to have access to vetted content and others to be unknowingly left behind. It\u2019s the time for Twitter and the rest of the socialsphere to\u00a0make good on what the App.net community wanted from the beginning \u2014 user-first social networks. There\u2019s no reason to think that won\u2019t bring everyone more revenue in the process.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Article source: http:\/\/feedproxy.google.com\/~r\/techcrunch\/social\/~3\/Bv8STMbXRQU\/<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Aiming for the stars and not quite making it, the ambitious App.net has finally officially shut down. Its timely rise and fall comes as highly symbolic as\u00a0its once rival, Twitter, <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[3],"tags":[10,7,14,15,6,12,11],"class_list":["post-2850","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-latest-update","tag-computer-news","tag-downloads","tag-microsoft-download-news","tag-networking-updates","tag-technology-update","tag-wordpress-plugin-download","tag-wordpress-theme-download"],"aioseo_notices":[],"aioseo_head":"\n\t\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t\n\t\t