zlacker

>>antina+(OP)
So to recap, Twitter exploded onto the scene in 2007, the "fail whale" appeared a lot, developers made all sorts of wonderful programs hooked into Twitter, the fail whale disappeared, Twitter started to destroy the app ecosystem, App.net launched to great fanfare in response to Twitter's knuckleheaded anti-developer stance, Britney Spears and Justin Bieber arrived and knocked all the nerds out of the top spots on Twitterholic, Donald Trump came and bludgeoned everyone with his bombastic prose, and now App.net is shutting down.

And after all this, Twitter still does not have a viable business model.

>>milesf+q9
> And after all this, Twitter still does not have a viable business model.

...more pertinently, App.net didn't have one either - and they had an open API, charged real money and did all the things HNers' idealized version of Twitter would.

>>sangno+El
Right - it seemed at the time it might become e an idealized version of Twitter. My hope was that by having to pay money to get in, it would keep out the shills and noise. I was a paid member for several years but it became clear that none of the people I followed moved so it became a ghost town.

>>2sk21+Xt
> My hope was that by having to pay money to get in, it would keep out the shills and noise.

Interesting. I'd expect something entirely opposite - with one platform, pay-for-entrance, shills / marketers can just write the entry costs off as a small marketing expense. OTOH I can easily imagine a lot of smart people with interesting things to say shying away from spending money on such a platform.