zlacker

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+(OP)
> 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.

>>TeMPOr+A6
It's not like using Twitter doesn't come with costs; you need to learn how to use it, you need to follow people to stay up to date, you should probably reply to some of the people tweeting at you; and last but not least, you also need to spend time on actually coming up with things to say. That's a massive time investment. The opportunity cost of that time is a lot more than the $5 app.net used to cost per month.

I assume that $5 a month is only a problem for occasional users -- but I doubt that those add a lot of value to the ecosystem (aside from higher numbers of total users signed up and other vanity metrics)

>>jakobe+V8
Many regular users start out as occasional users. A fee impedes this.