A lot of people appear to be jumping on board the app.net train.
App.net is a rival to twitter. It’s essentially the same concept, but with a better design, less clutter and (ideally) no spam, because there’s a paywall to get through in order to jump in. They are being funded through kickstarter-esque means, and there’s a week left in the program. To date they’ve accrued 45% of their total required funding (which seems unusually high), which to me says that people don’t want an alternative to twitter – they just want twitter to work.
Like Google+, app.net is a better version of it’s primary rival, but the main issue is it’s simply not social enough. Not enough of my friends, family or extended internet follower/followee types are using it. So why would I use it? The exclusive club ethos works well in some instances, but definitely not in social media.
I will check app.net out once I have the opportunity. If they can roll developers of apps (ironically) into it then it will be a winner for me, as long as they attract a solid community with which to interact with. I just don’t quite believe it has the same staying power as twitter does. Sadly, twitter works because of its clutter, which is there to empower fools who only want to hear from Britney or Kanye.
