[neuroscr]

App.net does provide an account export. But more important they've embraced open standards, see: http://blog.app.net/2013/08/07/response-to-brennan-novak-par...

This type of interoperability combined with sections of their API that are public (tokenless) provide a way to consume App.net content without needing an account unless you want to participate.

Then there are 3rd party apps and additions that bring even more open interoperability.

For development, there is Dev-Lite, so if you want to play around with the API, you don't need to spend $100/year until you're ready to join their Developer Incentive Program. And most Developers that have built anything for app.net have made their $100/year investment.

And App.net's annotation are another great example of creating new open standard of interoperability. These attachments can be added to any App.net API primitive to provide additional structured data to enhance interoperability between developer applications. Here's a link to their document repository for this: https://github.com/appdotnet/object-metadata