Meet App.Net, The Paid Twitter Alternative That Has Already Raised $480,000 From Users

[george]

Meet App.net, The Paid Twitter Alternative That Has Already Raised $480,000 From Users

Nowadays, we're used to getting online services for free.

Free email from Google. Free cloud storage from Dropbox. Free streaming music from Spotify.

The problem with that? You have to deal with ads.

That's why Dalton Caldwell – you may remember him from this epic open letter to Mark Zuckerberg from a few days ago – started App.net, an alternative social network that you pay to use.

Caldwell and his team are raising money in a Kickstarter-like project to bring App.net to life. The goal is to raise $500,000 in 30 days. As of this writing, App.net has received just under $500,000. Fundraising ends August 13.

App.net functions a lot like Twitter, letting you follow users and view a feed of their updates. The company compares its service to how Twitter functioned "before it turned into a media company." The platform is also open to developers to create apps that'll help make the App.net more useful.

It's a noble-sounding effort, and App.net has gotten a lot of praise from tech pundits and other bigwigs in the industry such as Robert Scoble, Leo Laporte, and John Gruber.

If you want to give App.net a try, you can donate now. A $50 donation gives you access to the service for one year, $100 adds the bonus of developer tools to start creating apps for App.net, and a $1,000 donation will score you a personal meeting with Dalton.

Join app.net: https://join.app.net/

Read more: http://www.businessi...8#ixzz23LUQWi6Q

-- Business Insider 2012-08-12

[george]

App.net hits $500K funding goal nearly two days early

Alternative social network achieves crowd-funding goal after a last-minute push for pledges from new sponsors.

by Steven Musil August 12, 2012 12:15 PM PDT

App.net's goal of creating an alternative social network took a big step forward with the announcement that it had achieved the goal of raising $500,000 in a crowd-funding campaign.

The project, which seeks to build an open API framework for developers, achieved its pledge goal with almost two days to spare before its deadline, thanks mostly to a last-minute push for new sponsors.

More than 7,800 sponsors have pledged funds for varying membership privileges. A $50 basic membership gives donors an annual membership, while a $1,000 donation gives members access to the developer tools and telephone support.

In his plea for funding, App.net founder Dalton Caldwell said the goal of the project is to "create the service we all wish existed"

We're building a real-time social service where users and developers come first, not advertisers.

Our team has spent the last 9 years building social services, developer platforms, mobile applications and more.

We believe that advertising-supported social services are so consistently and inextricably at odds with the interests of users and developers that something must be done.

App.net is not the first social-networking project to give Facebook and Twitter a run for their money. Diaspora, a social-networking project hatched by four New York University programming students in their early 20s, also tried the micro-funding approach a couple of years ago.

Goto App.net: http://join.app.net

-- CNET 2012-08-13