MG Siegler doesn’t think App.net will succeed →
Neither do I, honestly. I don’t think it’s possible.
First, $50 per year is far too much, even for people who pay for things. Twitter probably couldn’t sell a lot of paid subscriptions at that rate.
But the bigger problem is that I just don’t see a social platform growing quickly enough to overcome the network-effect barrier when it’s not free to join, especially when the goal is effectively to replace an existing, free, extremely successful network.
The nature of the network effect probably means that general-purpose social communication services must be free in order to ever grow to a significant size. This is even more true when there’s an established free competitor.
I’d love to be proven wrong on this. That’s why I backed App.net: if they reach their goal, that’s a pretty good sign that I’m wrong, and I want to be a part of it.
If you think I’m wrong, prove it.