Despite having a terrible name, I have really a good feeling about App.net. From now on I’ll refer to it as ADN as it is a regular thing among the user of the service.
First of all let’s start with why I’ve decided to join ADN. I knew about its launch since August because it immediately became a trending topic among the tech-geek community. Why? Because deciding to go after Twitter with a paid service seemed crazy. as much as first users and tech press declared it dead before time.
ADN reached its initial goal of $500,000 to get started by offering two subscription level: $50 as a regular user, $100 to get full access to the API.
At that time I wasn’t so sure about joining if not just for being labeled as a super-early adopters, so I decided to wait until today. What has changed in the meanwhile? A lot.
First of all the community kept grooving over time, reaching today a very respectable 20,000+ users, secondly yesterday Tapbots released its own ADN client for iOS called Netbot. Third (but less important for me) the subscription cost dropped to $36 for a year (with a new $5/month plan and the usual $100 for developers).
So when I joined the community I knew I was entering quite a mature community (formed largely by geeks and tech-related people) and I had the opportunity to have a great client in order to use it.
For me the release of Netbot was even more important than the number of people on the community. I’m a firm believer that to enjoy any kind of web service you have to have a great client that is able to enrich your experience of use. I’m a great Twitter user because I love all the features and visual goodness I can find in Tweetbot and I’m enjoying ADN because I’ve found exactly the same experience with Netbot.
Of course the community is important and I was very surprised by the initial conversations I had earlier. Since it’s still a closed and limited community you can follow the general stream where you can see posts by everybody and you can easily jump into any kind of conversation and there are good chances that people will reply to you quite quickly.
I was also surprise in how quickly I got some answers to questions I’ve posted few minutes earlier.
I have the feeling that ADN could be a great source where you can meet really great people, especially people that have more or less my same interests. This is due mostly to the entry fee. If you are on board it means that you are really interested in that kind of community and it also means that you’re going to contribute actively to the general conversation.
As you may have understood, I’m deeply satisfied by this initial approach with ADN and I really want to get the best from it, so in the following days I’ll try to create a good circle of following and I will start to broadcast my words there.
See you on the dark side of the force!