zlacker

>>aculve+(OP)
I'm not really sure what the purpose of this service is. Could somebody please explain? I'm not trying to be a dick. I myself wouldn't pay to use Facebook minus the ads. I barely use it as it is. I only pay for things that provide me with some utility. The description of "a paid, real-time social feed" is vague and ambiguous.

>>dkrich+J1
I'm not really sure what the purpose of this service is. ... I myself wouldn't pay to use Facebook minus the ads.

You answered your own question above, and also identified why app.net won't interest you. If you're okay with ads, then I think you'd get zero utility from app.net

>>achomp+s2
I appreciate the response, but that doesn't really answer the question of what the service provides that Facebook or Twitter doesn't.

Are ads in and of themselves really a huge problem? I don't find myself often annoyed by them. Now if there were a systemic change to the service because you didn't have to alter the experience for users to generate ad revenue, then I begin to understand. However if this is the idea, then in what ways the service would be different is exactly what I'm trying to figure out.

Remember, there are two sides to the coin "we offer a better experience without the ads" method. First of all you are going to get a smaller user base. So how much are you going to charge? $5/month? $10/month? You would need to get a pretty massive user base to be able to pay the overhead and attract top engineering talent, so in the end I'm not sure you'd be a whole lot better off.

>>dkrich+J2
Again, you answered in your first 3 sentences. The propsed absence of advertising on app.net will change how users interact with the service, as well as how the service grows.

Twitter and Facebook wants to market to their users. This now influences all of their product decisions! Any changes to the service aim to increase CPM. I won't debate whether that makes FB/Twitter better or worse, but they are fundamentally different than a product which does not seek, above all else, to raise money by advertising to its users.

Here are some ways in which a paid service might differ from an ad-based service:

(1) No ads means no B2B sales team, which means more money to hire developers.

(2) The product pipeline looks different without ads. Would Twitter have featured "Explore" so prominently if it wasn't a central hub for advertising? Would they have de-emphasized direct messages?

(3) Lower infrastructure costs and dev time related to scaling. A smaller user base, in this case, will require less supporting infrastructure and a simpler code base. Both of these save app.net money and dev time, allowing the team to focus on features.

(4) Analytics and research will have a different purpose. Instead of analyzing user behavior to identify ideal ad placement or selection, App.net will try to identify the best features and cull the worst in an attempt to keep users around.

>>achomp+17
I have joined and paid $100 but my biggest concern is they are VC funded which is a more insidious position for someone to pressure them to do something not in line with the current vision. Also, there is a long line of startups that hate advertising at first then acquiesced when the only budget big enough to cover their burn rate are the ones advertisers have. This includes Facebook, Twitter, and Tumblr.