App.net Blog

"The bad news is that the renewal rate was not high enough for us to have sufficient budget for full-time employees. After carefully considering a few different options, we are making the difficult decision to no longer employ any salaried employees, including founders." http://blog.app.net/ So effectively development stopped in 2014 and it's on maintenance mode since then.

Links: http://blog.app.net/2013/11/21/announcing-app-net-broadcast/ https://app.net/c/2wtz http://blog.ycombinator.com/subscribe-to-y-combinators-broadcasts-via-…

There has been a lot going on in the past year for the service: * Free tier of accounts. Limited to following 40 people, limited file storage * Multiple microblogging clients on just about every platform * 2FA and messages, files, search, and geolocation APIs It isn't just a "gimped facebook clone", the App.net service is a framework for developers to build a multitude of social networks on top of a single platform. The microblogging aspect was just the easiest "get" for them out of the gate. You can look at their One Year post [0] if you want to see a list of everything that they've implemented. [0]: http://blog.app.net/2013/08/14/we-are-just-getting-started/

So remember this: at its core, App.net is an ad-free, subscription-based platform, a backbone, a dialtone. [1] I had to go back and find that to make sure I wasn't misremembering. If the free tier includes a cap on the number of people you can follow, has the "we're not just a pay twitter" angle been abandoned? [1] http://blog.app.net/2012/08/

App.net does provide an account export. But more important they've embraced open standards, see: http://blog.app.net/2013/08/07/response-to-brennan-novak-part-ii/ This type of interoperability combined with sections of their API that are public (tokenless) provide a way to consume App.net content without needing an account unless you want to participate. Then there are 3rd party apps and additions that bring even more open interoperability. For development, there is Dev-Lite, so if you want to play around with the API, you don't need to spend $100/year until you're ready to join their Developer Incentive Program. And most Developers that have built anything for app.net have made their $100/year investment. And App.net's annotation are another great example of creating new open standard of interoperability. These attachments can be added to any App.net API primitive to provide additional structured data to enhance interoperability between developer applications. Here's a link to their document repository for this: https://github.com/appdotnet/object-metadata

In related news, app.net will shut down in March (http://blog.app.net/2017/01/12/app-net-is-shutting-down/).

Shutdown date according to https://alpha.app.net/: March 15, 2017. Shutdown date according to http://blog.app.net/2017/01/12/app-net-is-shutting-down/: March 14, 2017. Which date is correct?

Eh, http://blog.app.net/2014/05/06/app-net-state-of-the-union/ I'm not sure app.net can be considered a viable long term solution.

Actually app.net is just dying: "After carefully considering a few different options, we are making the difficult decision to no longer employ any salaried employees, including founders." [1] 1. http://blog.app.net/2014/05/06/app-net-state-of-the-union/

App.net Broadcasts is pretty cool, using it on my Android: http://blog.app.net/2013/11/21/announcing-app-net-broadcast/

Earlier this year they added a free tier. http://blog.app.net/2013/02/25/introducing-a-free-tier/

There is a free tier which I have to assume will only grow over time as the business scales. http://blog.app.net/2013/02/25/introducing-a-free-tier/

The pledge was for $50. In October, the annual fee was lowered to $36. As a result, current members received 5 extra months on top of the first year. By the time your credit is up, in February or March 2014, I'm sure you'll be able to change your account to a free plan. http://blog.app.net/2012/10/01/app-net-pricing-changes/?utm_campaign=e…