[neuroscr]

It was actually part of their original plan (See the beginning of http://blog.app.net/2013/02/25/introducing-a-free-tier/)

First they charged and crowd-sourced for marketing and proving their concept. Paying early adopters allowed them to pay developers which attracted the developers who made apps. Then they had the apps and content to attract the users, so they made it free.

I believe they embraced of open standards like RSS and WebFinger (http://blog.app.net/2013/08/07/response-to-brennan-novak-par...) to make sure developers would choose them for implementation.

I think App.net maybe trying to become the identity platform for the web (maybe not the only one but a damn good alternative to the rest).

As a developer given the choice between Twitter's 100k token limit or App.net's almost 200k users (plus a chance to get paid by app.net) it's a no brainer.

I think their main competitor now is Facebook Connect. And there are plenty of users out there that are refusing to use FB.