app.net

App.net's push for renewals starts with free accounts

App.net, a for-pay social service, today introduced a free tier in a proactive move to ramp up on members before current subscribers are forced to renew.

The membership level, modeled after Dropbox, grants people invited by current App.net members the ability to use the social site for as long as they'd like, but with limitations on how many people they can follow and how many files they can upload.

The point of a freemium offering, said creator Dalton Caldwell, is to make App.net open and accessible and to get people excited to pay for additional features. … Read more

App.net will begin paying out $20K monthly to app developers

App.net, an alternative social network, today rolled out a financial incentive plan to persuade developers to build on apps on its APIs.

Next month, the program will begin distributing $20,000 a month to eligible App.net developers, with payouts to individual developers varying based on user satisfaction with the apps, App.net founder Dalton Caldwell said in a company blog post detailing the program.

"The goal of this program is to financially reward the development of great App.net applications," Caldwell said.

Deciding on a metric to determine which developers deserved the greatest reward for creating &… Read more

Developers slam Twitter's new restrictions on access

Twitter's decision to slap new restrictions on developers is a little like a marriage splintering asunder. It's not that things were always this bad, but, well, our needs have changed, and we want different things than we did six years ago.

The divorce papers arrived Thursday afternoon in the form of an announcement saying that certain app developers -- some of the folks who contributed to Twitter's rapid ascent in the first place -- should no longer feel welcome in the Twitterverse. Tweetbot and Echofon were singled out by name, prompting other programmers in Silicon Valley's … Read more

App.net: A social network made possible by Facebook and Twitter

SAN FRANCISCO -- Starting a new social network is a terrible idea, right? Facebook's stock debut has been the worst in history, and even Twitter's growth is slowing.

The problem with this theory is that it entirely fails to explain the early success that Dalton Caldwell, a San Francisco entrepreneur, has enjoyed in launching a would-be rival social network called App.net.

"I'm really burnt out on the rampant cynicism," Caldwell told a standing-room-only crowd of over 200 developers at AirBnB's headquarters here this week. Instead of complaining about other services' flaws, he said, … Read more

App.net: 'Plumbing' for social apps, not Twitter rival (podcast)

App.net founder Dalton Caldwell was impressed by Twitter in its "early days" when third-party developers were using it as a platform to "build really strange and amazing software, which is not what the people at Twitter necessarily intended." At that point, said Caldwell, "they had an open platform and you could build any kind of business on it in."

But, he added, "there's been a number of business moves made by Twitter to restrict third-party access to the data and discourage third-party clients being built." He said Twitter's "… Read more

Building apps for Facebook: A dance with the devil

Dalton Caldwell caused a stir recently when he posted an open letter to Mark Zuckerberg, accusing top Facebook execs of threatening his latest startup with the Luca Brasi treatment: Sell out to us or we'll crush you.

"I had explicit approval from Facebook to build what I was building," says Caldwell, a software developer who unexpectedly found himself in the crosshairs because an app he was building to run atop Facebook was similar to Facebook's recently unveiled App Center. "They said, 'Sorry, we just need the revenue.'"

Caldwell's public dust-up with Facebook -- … Read more

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

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 … Read more

Philips brings 3D Blu-ray and NetApps to line of home theater systems

LAS VEGAS--Philips is adding on-demand Web content and Internet apps to its line of Blu-ray players and also adding the same functionality to a set of home theater systems. All of the devices allow access to services like Netflix, Vudu, Facebook, and Twitter.

The 3D BDP7506 ($220, April) and BDP5506 ($200, March) feature touch-screen controls and the full line of Philips services like MediaConnect (PC to TV); the BDP7506 also allows for DLNA playback.

These two top-of-the-line players are followed by the BDP3506 ($170, February, with 3D, NetApps, video-on-demand), BDP3306 ($150, February, with NetApps, video-on-demand), and the BDP3006 ($130, February, … Read more