BarCamp Rhein Main 2013Lukas Rosenstock

Disclaimer: Neither I nor my own company are in any way affiliated with app.net. This presentation represents solely my

own personal opinion.

Dalton Caldwell

● Serial Entrepreneur: Imeem + picplz● app.net initial concept: landing pages for apps● app.net pivot: an ad-free social network

– $500.000 crowdfunding● WHY?

Twitter in the beginning

● Pioneer of Platforms and APIs● Powered by the community of early adopters

and developers– Users invented Hashtags, Retweets etc.

● 'Twitter’s not a site, it’s a protocol'– http://www.human20.com/twitters-not-a-site-its-a-protocol/

Twitter in 2012...

● Display Guidelines → Display Requirements● No anonymous API / no offical RSS feeds● Enforced t.co URL shortening● 1 million API access token limit for any

developer● 100 000 API access tokens for client apps

– „we gave developers guidance that they should not build client apps that mimic or reproduce the mainstream Twitter consumer client experience“

● http://dev.twitter.com/blog/changes-coming-to-twitter-api

Web Business Models

● Infrastructure Companies– Dropbox, Evernote,

AWS, Twilio, GitHub etc.

● Media/Advertising Companies– Twitter, Facebook,

Google etc.

● 'If you are building an advertising/media business, it would then follow that you need to own all of the screen real-estate that users see.'– http://daltoncaldwell.com/what-twitter-could-have-been

Social Infrastructure Company?!

● 'Why isn’t there an opportunity to pay money to get an ad-free feed from a company where the product is something you pay for, not, well, you.'– http://daltoncaldwell.com/an-audacious-proposal

Propably one of the app.net backers

Dalton 'screwed' by Facebook

● '[...] the individuals in the room explained that the product I was building was competitive with your recently-announced Facebook App Center product.'

● '[…] your “platform developer relations” executive made no attempt to defend my position. [...] made clear that the success of my product would be an impediment to your ad revenue financial goals […]'

● 'Personally speaking, I am resolved to never write another line of code for rotten-to-the-core “platforms” like Facebook or Twitter. Lesson learned.'

● 'Your company, and Twitter, have demonstrably proven that they are willing to screw with users and 3rd-party developer ecosystems, all in the name of ad-revenue.'

– http://daltoncaldwell.com/dear-mark-zuckerberg

Overview on App.net

● Products / APIs:– Stream

– Message Channels

– Files

– NEW: Broadcasts

● Account Tiers:– Free

– Yearly User ($36/year)

– Monthly User ($5/m.)

– Developer ($100/year)

Stream

● Twitter-like but with 256 characters– Profiles, Bios, Hashtags, Search, Reposts,

@Mentions, Conversations …

– Annotations, e.g. for Places● User-defined annotation types

– Domain Verification

● $ Free tier can follow max. 40 users

Alpha:The default web stream client

Favd:third party 'Instagram clone' built on top of app.net streams

Message Channels

● Public, private, groups● Control read/write access● Publish/Subscribe-Model or auto-subscription● Two or multiple members

Patter:third party chat system built on app.net messaging

Amy:third party plugin for private and group messaging on a Mac

Files

● General purpose file storage API for apps– e.g. for photos shared in the stream

● $ Free users have 500 MB, paid users 10 GB

Can app.net be successful?

● Currently: 200.000 users● We don't know yet – it's a Social Software

business model experiment● If you want them to succeed ….

Action steps

● Go to http://join.app.net/● Create an account● Follow me: @lukasros :-)

Alternatives

● Twitter/Facebook– Remember: You are the product!

● Decentralized Social Networks– Diaspora, status.net/identi.ca, tent.io, pump.io

oStatus …● Highly fragmented market

● IndieWeb Movement– Microblogging on your own domain

– Silos (Twitter/Facebook etc.) for distribution

PESOS

● Publish Elsewhere, Syndicate on your Own Site– http://indiewebcamp.com/PESOS

● Services often limit/disallow this in their terms● E = app.net

– Use any client (e.g. Robin on Android, Felix on iOS)

● OS = phpADNSite :-)– Archival of all posts in a MySQL database

– Custom visualization, permalinks on your own domain etc.

– https://github.com/LukasRos/phpADNSite

phpADNSiteopen source project - in development

demo running on http://lukasrosenstock.net

Thank you!

Questions?!