[briandear]

So what's the business model? Are there enough developers willing to pay real money for access to an API? It seems hard enough to get developers to actually buy a license for Sublime or TextMate (or even pay $0.99 for a song on iTunes.)

I could see some potential in the enterprise space to license out the API for companies to then build their own information services atop of.. but that seems to get away from the "power to the people" idea this project seems to be capitalizing on.

>App.net focuses on the API and let's the developers build the robust applications.

Robust applications that do what? I'm not sure what the value of the API is, isn't the point of a Twitter-like API to allow people to use Twitter data. The API side of the equation isn't that hard to do.. it's the content accessed with the API that would be useful. I can see and appreciate the tech in this project, but I'm not sure why a developer would build an application to consume an API without much data..

I'm confused. I don't mean any disrespect to the folks involved or their supporters, but I'm not sure what this project will accomplish -- is it a technology platform or a content platform? And is the technology that "hard" -- it seems to me that getting the content would be the hard part.

[andrew_simone]

I don't understand the confusion folks have about the business model (earnest confusion, not "yur dumb" trolling confusion). App.net creates an API and people pay money to have access. Different tiers demand different prices. $500,000 in membership fees makes it sustainable (says Dalton). The big question and, quite frankly, the whole point of Dalton's experiment (as I read him anyway, I don't know the fellow personally), is to test if there is actually a market for it, hence the kickstarter like campaign. There are paid version of all sorts of web services that are offered for free that are sustainable. I pay for a server space and a domain names yearly. I don't know why something like this couldn't also exist for those who wanted more control. Will Dalton's work? Time will tell, but something like this will happen and will happen soon.

EDIT: Incidentally, you do know that other people are trying similar things, right? Heello, for instance, is rebooting with a slightly different model: http://thenextweb.com/insider/2012/08/08/twitpic-founders-he....

[vandershraaf]

Exactly. People would consider a mobile apps outside 99 cents mark as expensive, even more so if it costs you $50

[anu_gupta]

Some / many people would not consider an app that cost more than 99cents expensive, and having a barrier to exclude those that do isn't necessarily a bad thing.