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App.net is dead, long live Micro.blog

By Alvin Soon - on 16 Jan 2017, 2:14pm

App.net is dead, long live Micro.blog

Image source: App.net

App.net has announced that it will shut down the service on March 14, 2017. If you’ve never heard of App.net, we won’t blame you.

App.net was an ambitious ad-free social networking platform started in 2012 to rival Twitter. It promised to give its users total control over their data and to support third-party developers who’d make apps to support App.net.  App.net would also be completely self-sustainable by charging membership fees. 

Unfortunately, things didn’t turn out too well for App.net. In 2014, App.net officially entered ‘maintenance mode’ when it received enough subscriptions to be profitable and keep the service running, but not enough to hire salaried employees.

The end of App.net comes not long after developer Manton Reece launched a Kickstarter campaign for another Twitter alternative, Micro.blog. The key difference between Micro.blog and App.net is that you can host your Micro.blog on your own like a Wordpress site.

Basic accounts for Micro.blog will be free, but Reece doesn’t plan to introduce ads into the platform. Instead, he plans to sustain it with revenue from a paid plan that includes hosting.

App.net and Micro.blog are both born out of a frustration and worry in recent years that we’ve all poured too much of our own content into silos like Facebook and Twitter, who profit off us, don’t share any of the spoils, don’t let us export our data easily, and could take everything offline if either company winds up.

It’s unclear if the business of Micro.blog will succeed where App.net failed. While the principles of the open web are ideal, they have also appeared to be idealistic, in that most people on the web don’t seem to care about details like privacy and ownership over convenience and the price of free.

So long, App.net, we hardly knew you. Hello, Micro.blog, here’s hoping you make it longer than the last guy.

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