[aviswanathan]

I sort of understand the reasoning behind App.net, but I'm worried that its developer focus will prevent many average users from joining the service and prevent it from really providing the social layer that's necessary to actually build something network-driven out of it.

The reason Facebook and Twitter are popular platforms are not necessarily because of their particular features or user data but because of the massive networks they represent. By tying our products to their ecosystem, you're able to leverage their technologies and data while still having a large enough addressable market. This is definitely not the case with App.net (at least so far).

I think what App.net might have that's unique is an active developer community (as opposed to a mass of average users), so perhaps it can standalone as a developer-friendly social platform, but I'm questionable as to whether anything of mass market value can come out of it, especially on the B2C side.

[fakeer]

Even if they could have pulled some stunning and innovative UI, sparkling apps on all the platforms(at least major ones; by this I mean Android included), it could have been an irresistible platform. Sth that was useful to people other than being a paid Twitter replacement - mostly.

WhatsApp comes to mind.