Do you think App.net is just a Twitter clone? You are missing the point!
Most critics of the Dalton Caldwell project (Dalton Caldwell) App.net argue that this is just an alternative to Twitter, which is paid for by users, not advertisers. But is it really? In this article we will try to understand what App.net is really trying to achieve.
App.net is an ambitious project by entrepreneur Dalton Caldwell, which is something like a paid Twitter and recently received $ 500,000 from Kickstarter. Some critics believe that an alternative Twitter is absolutely not needed by anyone, and that app.net will definitely fail. But regardless of whether it fails or not, the idea of ​​the service itself is much more than just a paid Twitter clone. In fact, Caldwell’s goal is to create a service that provides a unified messaging system for social networks or between applications in real time.
There are more ambitions in this idea than in simply copying Twitter or some of its functions. And now that Caldwell, despite the expectations of many people, has received funding, all that remains is to watch the public’s reaction to see if people are willing to pay for such a service, especially if most of the attempts to create such a single ecosystem for social networks failed miserably.
Orian Marx (Orian Marx), the creator of the New York startup Siftee, recently well described what the alpha version of App.net and Caldwell’s ambitions with partners are. When you first open the site really resembles a very stripped-down version of Twitter with a much smaller number of users and features. This makes many people think that they have come to the next unfinished copy. But this is how Marx describes it: “App.net wants to combine the simplicity of the cloud infrastructure with the advantages of web platforms for creating a better platform for developing social web applications.”
In other words, the alpha version is just a test, a prototype of what can be done using the App.net platform. This platform uses open standards, such as PubSubHubbub and ActivityStreams, as well as other protocols that simplify the dissemination of information between several social networks, track users, etc. This can be compared, perhaps, with Amazon Web Services, which provides tools such as Elastic Compute Cloud and EC2, on the basis of which developers can create their services.
')
You can look at this situation from another angle: remember how e-mail looked before or, for example, instant messaging. There were several competing platforms and standards, and nothing like the open API and other things related to sharing information. CompuServe Mail users could not communicate with users of other mail hosts, as well as ICQ and AOL users could not communicate with users of competitors (MSN and Gchat).
Albert Wenger of Union Square Ventures in a recent publication noted the compatibility of standards and protocols as one of the main advantages of app.net: “It will be very useful if we can, for example, send emails from social networks where we sit . It will be great if everyone can enjoy what they like. ”
While Twitter has become a powerful information and publishing system and a bit of a real-time news feed, it still remains a private corporation with its own commercial interests, and controls most of its network in order to monetize. One of the main incentives for Caldwell was the feeling that Twitter at some point gave up the desire to be informationally useful and decided to become an advertising-based media outlet .
“App.net offers a robust API platform that is less likely to be pulled out from under our feet when venture capitalists want to see a profit,” said one platform supporter.
There were other attempts to create something like an open platform for social networks, and most of them did not end well. For example, there is OpenSocial from Google using an open protocol. Although the project still exists, it almost did not reach any heights, and after Google abandoned the SIocial Graph API, all the hopes of the project turned to dust. True or not, the project is considered an attempt by Google to compete with Facebook. But then the company decided to send forces to support its own network Google+.
In a sense, App.net has similarities with FriendFeed, a social network created by ex-Google employees Bratt Taylor (Bret Taylor) and Paul Buchheit (Paul Buchheit, one of the Gmail developers) in 2007, allowing users to pull messages and updates from Facebook, Twitter and Flickr. As a result, FriendFeed was absorbed by Facebook for $ 48 million.
So, App.net threatens to create a single ecosystem for the exchange of information between social networks and applications. Do you think they have a chance? Will such a platform eventually be built? Or the Internet will take a different path of development?
App.net is an ambitious project by entrepreneur Dalton Caldwell, which is something like a paid Twitter and recently received $ 500,000 from Kickstarter. Some critics believe that an alternative Twitter is absolutely not needed by anyone, and that app.net will definitely fail. But regardless of whether it fails or not, the idea of ​​the service itself is much more than just a paid Twitter clone. In fact, Caldwell’s goal is to create a service that provides a unified messaging system for social networks or between applications in real time.
There are more ambitions in this idea than in simply copying Twitter or some of its functions. And now that Caldwell, despite the expectations of many people, has received funding, all that remains is to watch the public’s reaction to see if people are willing to pay for such a service, especially if most of the attempts to create such a single ecosystem for social networks failed miserably.
App.net wants to be a platform, not just an application.
Orian Marx (Orian Marx), the creator of the New York startup Siftee, recently well described what the alpha version of App.net and Caldwell’s ambitions with partners are. When you first open the site really resembles a very stripped-down version of Twitter with a much smaller number of users and features. This makes many people think that they have come to the next unfinished copy. But this is how Marx describes it: “App.net wants to combine the simplicity of the cloud infrastructure with the advantages of web platforms for creating a better platform for developing social web applications.”
In other words, the alpha version is just a test, a prototype of what can be done using the App.net platform. This platform uses open standards, such as PubSubHubbub and ActivityStreams, as well as other protocols that simplify the dissemination of information between several social networks, track users, etc. This can be compared, perhaps, with Amazon Web Services, which provides tools such as Elastic Compute Cloud and EC2, on the basis of which developers can create their services.
')
You can look at this situation from another angle: remember how e-mail looked before or, for example, instant messaging. There were several competing platforms and standards, and nothing like the open API and other things related to sharing information. CompuServe Mail users could not communicate with users of other mail hosts, as well as ICQ and AOL users could not communicate with users of competitors (MSN and Gchat).
Albert Wenger of Union Square Ventures in a recent publication noted the compatibility of standards and protocols as one of the main advantages of app.net: “It will be very useful if we can, for example, send emails from social networks where we sit . It will be great if everyone can enjoy what they like. ”
Will there be enough promise of an open platform?
While Twitter has become a powerful information and publishing system and a bit of a real-time news feed, it still remains a private corporation with its own commercial interests, and controls most of its network in order to monetize. One of the main incentives for Caldwell was the feeling that Twitter at some point gave up the desire to be informationally useful and decided to become an advertising-based media outlet .
“App.net offers a robust API platform that is less likely to be pulled out from under our feet when venture capitalists want to see a profit,” said one platform supporter.
There were other attempts to create something like an open platform for social networks, and most of them did not end well. For example, there is OpenSocial from Google using an open protocol. Although the project still exists, it almost did not reach any heights, and after Google abandoned the SIocial Graph API, all the hopes of the project turned to dust. True or not, the project is considered an attempt by Google to compete with Facebook. But then the company decided to send forces to support its own network Google+.
In a sense, App.net has similarities with FriendFeed, a social network created by ex-Google employees Bratt Taylor (Bret Taylor) and Paul Buchheit (Paul Buchheit, one of the Gmail developers) in 2007, allowing users to pull messages and updates from Facebook, Twitter and Flickr. As a result, FriendFeed was absorbed by Facebook for $ 48 million.
So, App.net threatens to create a single ecosystem for the exchange of information between social networks and applications. Do you think they have a chance? Will such a platform eventually be built? Or the Internet will take a different path of development?
Source: https://habr.com/ru/post/149724/
All Articles