If even Google is having trouble getting traction with a social networking product, I don't see why anyone is confident that a social network users have to pay for will end up with a large enough user base to be useful.
Yes. But I have no interest in talking to +90% of the people on Twitter and Facebook. The success of app.net won't depend on how many total users sign up over the services lifetime. It will depend more on how interesting the people who ultimately sign up are. A lot of it is perception, right now twitter is something of a worldwide telegraph broadcast service, you say something in 140 characters to as many people as humanly possible. You're trying to garner as many likes and followers as you can.
App.net can't compete as a broadcast service, they don't; and never will have the userbase to do so. I feel like they'll have to differentiate themselves in some other way to be successful.
If the conversations end up anything near as inane as twitter it's doomed.
I don't see how this is true. If my friends aren't on App.net, I'll still use Facebook. If the people who discuss the issues that I tend to tweet about aren't on App.net, I'll still use Twitter. What will I then gain by using App.net as well, especially since most App.net users will probably syndicate their posts to Twitter?
Maybe App.net will nicely take care of that. I would definitely like to see a social network that provides me with content I want for once. Google+ has come pretty close, but that'll rapidly change if it gains mainstream traction, although Circles could prove to be a solution.
I unfollow people on Twitter when I don't care to see what they're posting. Most people don't use the tools that notify users when people unfollow them, so it's not a big deal. Even for the ones that notice, I just don't care. I don't use Twitter for friends; I use it for interests. If you're not posting about my interests with an acceptable signal to noise ratio, you're unfollowed.
Using App.net to filter out people you don't want to hear from won't work unless you think the value of ones posts correlates with their propensity to pay. I doubt that's the case, and you're definitely going to filter out plenty of worthwhile content that people post on Twitter.
It seems to me that people want App.net to succeed regardless of the likelihood that it will solve their problems. This is a good position for App.net to be in, but I don't understand it.