zlacker

The reason I think App.net is going to grow is NOT because it doesn't have ads or that the "users are not the product", etc. It's because the community it hosts will be so tightly grouped around a similar, passionate interest: tech startups. Requiring payment, being called "App.net" (they'll be tempted to change this), and being distributed via word of mouth amongst the segregated tech startup community, will prevent so many different types of people from using it. This is all a great thing and I bet there will be opportunities for other "Twitter for ________" ventures. Charging for a service like this that caters to a much smaller market makes it sustainable.

Congrats to Dalton and all involved. This is one of the most interesting and courageous internet projects in recent time.

>>eoghan+(OP)
I don't see how "Twitter for _______" is a good idea. I can make "Twitter for _______" by following the right people. The idea that Twitter's user base is too broad doesn't make any sense to me.

>>eoghan+(OP)
I think how you concive it now is about spam free twitter or fb and thats what everybody is talking about. I dont think thats the real story. Imagine what you could do with real time syndication infrastructure with privacy and ownership controls built in. BP monitors, blood glucose monitors, runkeeper data, music listening streams, all kinds of data streams and a robust community of app builders to build all kinds of streaming and where desired sharing. If i dont want to see your spotify listens, i can turn that off, if i dont want you to see my health info but want to share with my doc, that can happen too. Go nuts, imagine the future without having to be forced to cram it into a timeline or public feed mined for ad relevance.

>>eoghan+(OP)
StockTwits is an example of Twitter for Finance. They are almost completely detached from Twitter (I believe you can post to Twitter from StockTwits but not read).

>>eoghan+(OP)
Agree with @jschlesser. I think app.net will evolve more like a backbone for other activity streams (private, public, internal), not so much as a standalone "niche Twitter", but it's fine that it will start out that way, and can be funded that way. Could be wrong, but I think that's what the enthusiasm is really about, not just finding another social network to play with.

>>natriu+t
You can only follow "the right people", but they'll still talk about things you're uninterested in. In addition, you'll also have people following you who have different interests, who will start irrelevant conversations with you.

Why does Hacker News exist? And other special interest web forums, Facebook groups, mailing lists? Who do interest groups hold meetups? People with shared interests get MASSIVE value from highly focused gatherings and conversations. And Twitter right now is anything but focused.

>>eoghan+51
Okay, this is a great point. However, it doesn't sound like what App.net is building.

>>eoghan+(OP)
> and being distributed amongst the segregated tech startup community will prevent so many different types of people from using it

For what it's worth, when I joined Twitter it was also a tech ghetto. Kevin Rose, Leo Laporte, Guy Kawasaki, and Veronica Belmont were all in the top 10 most followed accounts.

>>jschle+G
Note, got a reply from an insider @orian that this is not off base and how they are thinking too. More social infrastructure and not ad free twitter clone.

>>eoghan+(OP)
Is this tongue in cheek? I don't think this is what theu are gong for ...

>>eoghan+51
What's going to prevent people using app.net from talking about things you don't care about? There is nothing that forces you to only talk about tech and related, as far as I can tell. The reason this doesn't happen on HN is because the topics are agreed on and moderated.

>>karpat+U4
In general there are 3 solutions involving 'moderation':

1) self moderation: Google Plus has circles which you can theoretically use to share specific topics only with circles that you know to be passionate about them. Requires manual work to setup the right circles and people rarely do it.

2) manual moderation: Hacker News uses pg's time and some admin/moderator supervision to trim unwanted topics. Requires manual work which expands proportionally with the community's size if no automation is used.

3) automatic moderation: HN's flag system and community moderation (voting, Slashdot karma) seem to work relatively well, but they've been used until now predominantly to "rank" good comments to the top as opposed to "clustering" online communities into "sub-reddits" with focused interest groups.

>>eoghan+(OP)
That approach worked great for Quora early on.

>>vladd+x5
"share specific topics only with circles that you know to be passionate about them"

Sounds wrong, doesn't it? The circles sharing model is backwards-- why should I have to make guesses about what other people are interested about?

I've written about this on a previous App.net HN thread (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4304061, core excerpt = "I want to subscribe to that person on a "coding" stream, and leave the "personal" stream alone. People are multi-dimensional beings with many orthogonal interests; Consider giving them multiple stdouts.") and App.net PM said it was duly noted. I.e. it will be ignored, and the site is destined to be a noisy mess just like everything else that currently exists, except it will also cost money.

>>karpat+Oa
I share the same complaint, and I've thought many times to create a service like that but people just don't seem to care that much. Even my G+ stream has started in the last few months to get littered with all the usual personal bullshit photos; the reason I left Facebook & Twitter in the first place.

>>jschle+G
still unclear to me why i would/should pay to publish my runkeeper data into the ether or why i would pay to consume yours...will every user of app.net pay for the service? or is it only some subset who opt-in as donors? if the later, doesn't this create a free-rider problem? also, in that case you wind up with a small minority of donor users who are the customers and who set the agenda, not the majority user base, right? ...if the former, how can this become a mainstream consumer product? normal people don't care about any of these 'problems' and why will they pay for something facebook/twitter gives them in exchange for 'viewing' ads they've learned to ignore?

>>eoghan+(OP)
I think the model could be verticalized and spun out as a semi-silo'd location for enthusiasts of [topic]

>>karpat+Oa
I don't need multiple stdouts, necessarily. I do need 2&>1 for the social web.

>>karpat+Oa
> destined to be a noisy mess just like everything else that currently exists

Subjot (http://subjot.com/) would allow you to subscribe to people based on topic, but they shut down recently.