When Donald Caldwell got fed up with all theses free social media platforms that are supported with advertisements he decided to start a new social media platform; ‘App.net’ the idea is that ads ruin the user experience, and this is one of his primary criticisms of Facebook and Twitter. His proposition is that by not allowing ads, but charging app developers to use it, consumers could use the site, and find apps they want to use.
App.net is asking potential users to pay $50 to join, and in return it promises uses a “real-time social feed without the ads.” Founder Dalton Caldwell says the site will come to life if it raises $500,000 by Monday
Caldwell thinks Twitter, Facebook, and the like have been ruined by ads and spam, and his idea is a “noble-sounding effort” that has won praise from other techies, writes Steve Kovach at Business Adviser. But at Gawker, Adrien Chen pokes fun at the “geekier-than-thou” premise and its believers’ “socially conscious self-satisfaction.” Still, Chen isn’t betting against it. “I wouldn’t underestimate the geek hipster.”
App.net, the curious effort by Picplz founder Dalton Caldwell to create a new social media platform, has reached its $500,000 goal via a Kickstarter-like campaign, with about a day and a half to spare before its deadline.
“We did it,” Caldwell tweeted a few hours ago.
“We have a great deal of work to do. One of the most important things we need to do is put together a Terms of Service for the operating site. I will [be] spending a great deal of time in the coming days creating a draft of our ToS, and our forward plan is to host it on github. This way, folks can see it, offer feedback (even pull requests), and will be kept abreast of any future changes. Along these lines, there are still a great many questions that need to be answered before App.net should be thought of as an operating service, rather than just an alpha prototype.” Caldwell wrote on his blog.
