Diversity Sucks

18 August 2012

As 10,000 early adopters pledge $50 each for early access to App.net, The Kernel’s Mic Wright, bemoans the ‘reverse gentrification’ of social networks: > But as Facebook and Twitter enter the mainstream, elites have begun to grumble that newcomers don’t know how to “do it right”, as if the cultural rules imposed by them in the early days are immutable. > > […] > > For all its philosophical posturing about Twitter being a big meanie and the nature of openness, what App.net is really about is that geeks are getting uncomfortable with normal people encroaching on their space. That $50 fee is the equivalent of a massive stone wall around a gated community.

This wilfully misses the point of Twitter, which appeals to diverse groups because they can coexist without ever acknowledging each other.

If Twitter becomes popular among people who’s updates don’t interest me, then I choose not to follow them.

Twitter encourages individuals to create their own personal communities, which are gated by the explicit follow mechanism.

Wright continues: > Underlying App.net’s manifesto, there is a simple sentiment: diversity sucks. What’s really tweaking the nipples of the snarky tech classes is that people who shop in stores that aren’t “cool”, don’t know a damn thing about Ruby and can’t afford a new MacBook Air every year are suddenly having fun on “their” social networks. Intolerable!

Personally, I backed App.net because I value diversity. But diversity comes in many forms, and I’m specifically interested in the diversification of Internet business models.

Why should the only viable online business be selling user’s eyeballs to advertisers? I’m more comfortable investing my time, attention, and yes money, in a customer-vendor relationship.

Wright’s sensationalising, tabloidesque perspective of the motivation behind App.net’s backers, also fails to acknowledge a larger idea: Alpha is just a reference implementation on top of the App.net infrastructure to help orient new users, which is why it looks like Twitter. Eventually Alpha should be free for everyone to use, and some of it may be supported by ads. But the real potential of App.net is as infrastructure for social web applications.

As Orian Marx points out: > Social web apps are built around concepts like users, posts, connecting and sharing. App.net will provide a scalable infrastructure and a base model for these concepts upon which startups can innovate without reinventing the same wheels again and again. Developers will spend less time just trying to make their applications functional, so they can have more time to make them unique and useful.