{"id":16930,"date":"2017-01-13T13:01:50","date_gmt":"2017-01-13T18:01:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/?p=16930"},"modified":"2017-01-25T16:00:14","modified_gmt":"2017-01-25T21:00:14","slug":"app-net-is-shutting-down","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/2017\/01\/13\/app-net-is-shutting-down\/","title":{"rendered":"App.net Is Shutting Down"},"content":{"rendered":"

Dalton Caldwell<\/a> (Hacker News<\/a>, Slashdot<\/a>):<\/p>\n

\n

Ultimately, we failed to overcome the chicken-and-egg issue between application developers and user adoption of those applications. We envisioned a pool of differentiated, fast-growing third-party applications would sustain the numbers needed to make the business work. Our initial developer adoption exceeded expectations, but that initial excitement didn’t ultimately translate into a big enough pool of customers for those developers.<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Clark Goble<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Big benefit of ADN was having enough characters to comments on links and requotes. Hard in Twitter. Tone often comes off wrong.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Riccardo Mori<\/a>:<\/p>\n

But after a few weeks something clicked. I was loving the place. I thought the first interactions and mutual follows would involve people I knew (and knew me) from Twitter; instead I was welcomed by others I didn’t know from anywhere. A sense of ‘community in the making’ was quite palpable.<\/p>\n

And things only got better from there. I’m speaking about my experience, of course. ADN felt like the early days of Twitter, possibly even better. A basic feature like having 256 characters available in a post, instead of Twitter’s 140, turned out to make a huge<\/em> difference. Conversations lasted longer, got deeper, and with longer posts, people could explain themselves in a much better way than the average quipping in Twitter’s exchanges. Private messages, too, could be longer (2048 characters). The whole atmosphere was different than Twitter’s.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

The closest alternative is probably Gab<\/a>, although that does not seem to have native apps nor any traction in Mac\/iOS tech circles.<\/p>\n

More interesting are the decentralized alternatives<\/a>, which include Manton Reece’s<\/a> new Micro.blog<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Today, most writing instead goes into a small number of centralized social networking sites, where you can’t move your content, advertisements and fake news are everywhere, and if one of these sites fails, your content disappears from the internet. Too many sites have gone away and taken our posts and photos with them.<\/p>\n

I want to encourage more independent writing. To do that, we need better tools that embrace microblogs and the advantages of the open web. We need to learn from the success and user experience of social networking, but applied to the full scope of the web.<\/p>\n

I first set out to build a new service just for microblogs. It has a timeline experience like a social network, with replies and favorites, but it’s based on RSS, with the main posts pulled from independent sites.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

I’ve backed his Kickstarter<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

Previously: App.net State of the Union<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n

Update (2017-01-13): Nick Heer<\/a>:<\/p>\n

The biggest difference between App.net and Micro.blog is that the latter can be self-hosted, and is entirely decentralized. If Reece were to stop development of Micro.blog in ten years, existing installations would continue to work as long as the programming languages that power it remain compatible.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n\n

Update (2017-01-23): cgiffard<\/a>:<\/p>\n

\n

“We are starting an archival project<\/a> for App.net and would love your input and assistance.” — Archive Team<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n\n

Update (2017-01-25): Jonathan LaCour<\/a>:<\/p>\n

Manton, too, believes that the future of the open web is bright, and is throwing his own efforts behind the launch of a new, open platform for microblogging—like Twitter, but distributed, and owned by its users. We’d like to make it as easy as possible to launch a WordPress-powered microblog on DreamHost that integrates well with Manton’s upcoming Micro.blog service<\/a><\/span>. In order to support that mission, DreamHost is kicking in a $5,000 pledge to the Kickstarter.<\/p>\n

[…]<\/p>\n

If we succeed in our mission and vision, along with Manton, you’ll no longer just be a username belonging to a faceless organization. You’ll be able to build your digital presence as the open web intended: with your own domain, the freedom to move from one provider to another, and the assurance that your data belongs to you<\/em>, and no one else.<\/p><\/blockquote>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Dalton Caldwell (Hacker News, Slashdot): Ultimately, we failed to overcome the chicken-and-egg issue between application developers and user adoption of those applications. We envisioned a pool of differentiated, fast-growing third-party applications would sustain the numbers needed to make the business work. Our initial developer adoption exceeded expectations, but that initial excitement didn’t ultimately translate into […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"apple_news_api_created_at":"","apple_news_api_id":"","apple_news_api_modified_at":"","apple_news_api_revision":"","apple_news_api_share_url":"","apple_news_coverimage":0,"apple_news_coverimage_caption":"","apple_news_is_hidden":false,"apple_news_is_paid":false,"apple_news_is_preview":false,"apple_news_is_sponsored":false,"apple_news_maturity_rating":"","apple_news_metadata":"\"\"","apple_news_pullquote":"","apple_news_pullquote_position":"","apple_news_slug":"","apple_news_sections":"\"\"","apple_news_suppress_video_url":false,"apple_news_use_image_component":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[389,1016,872,1461,31,26,1462,52,49,96],"class_list":["post-16930","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","tag-app-dot-net","tag-datacide","tag-dreamhost","tag-gab","tag-ios","tag-iosapp","tag-micro-blog","tag-rss","tag-twitter","tag-web"],"apple_news_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16930","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=16930"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16930\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":17000,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/16930\/revisions\/17000"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=16930"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=16930"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mjtsai.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=16930"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}