zlacker

App.net combined two big ideas:

1. Social networks are important enough that a subscription model is viable

2. Social networks should be built on a platform for social network applications

Obviously neither idea could save app.net. Which idea caused most of the problems?

>>Zigurd+(OP)
I suspect 1 is the big turnoff. It's really hard to make people pay for something they can get for free, with a better perceived value. App.net promised to have value in the future, but demanded payment upfront. Twitter offers immediate value without demanding any form of payment.

>>rbanff+sh
I sort of agree. App.net lacked value at launch because of the way it intended to build value - through apps on it's platform. That's inevitably slow just when you need to build take-off momentum, and there is no way to "prime the pump" except by throwing money at the problem and hoping you get the right apps.

Moreover, Twitter has a problem with churn. It's free to start, but baffling for many, and troll-infested if you stick around. All ad-supported social networks have that problem plus the invasiveness issue.

>>Zigurd+(OP)
#1, but not inherently as much as for the effect it had on the consequences of other decisions: they launched with a hard pay-wall for the first couple years and that made the identity crisis fatal. They got a good deal of initial publicity but the first thing anyone curious got was a requirement that they pay to use it. That's always going to be a hard sell but it was especially bad when the messaging was so confused about whether it was a platform to build apps on, a Twitter competitor, etc. since the cost was real and up-front but any benefits were largely hypothetical based on enough other people deciding to pay at all and some of them building apps.

I think a subscription model could be viable with better execution but it really seems like that would be best with a tiered approach so the social network wasn't held back by the payment requirement.

>>acdha+jX
I think your diagnosis is on target: "the cost was real and up-front but any benefits were largely hypothetical based on enough other people deciding to pay at all and some of them building apps."

But freemium is hard: Either you make a market for ads, and have intrusive data collection and analytics, and you have to compete with the most intrusive ad-supported products that already dominate the ad market and you become as bad as them, OR you have pure freemium and you have the question of how to make the up-sell compelling enough while keeping the free level of service interesting enough. The only good example of success at freemium is LinkedIn where they segmented their user population and only made the recruiters pay a very high premium price.