I get the argument you are making and you have restated OP's post in a more respectful manner at least towards the donors.
As to App.net being more of a cause than a product, I disagree. App.net's form is formless. That users are projecting their hopes on the API is the idea. The difference is the users (mainly devs) are being empowered to build out those hopes.
The Twitter interface is just a use case of a realtime API. People waiting for Dalton to build the killer use case have missed the point. Look to the chaps that are paying $100/ year.
The internet's form is formless though, too. The successful part so far of this is a the rallying of the troops, at least a large core group of tech community folk.
Interesting comparison, because the internet (coming out of a governmental and international history) is founded on a documented stack of open standards which have many implementations.
I don't know much about app.net and will happily admit to being wrong about this, but my impression was that they were offering a platform without any of the ingredients for duplicating that platform. In that respect, like Twitter, even if they promise not to cater to the advertising/user data industry.
I guess every company would like to become as indispensable to the internet as TCP/IP. Except that this isn't how it works - it has to be open and easily reproduced in order to become a thing like TCP/IP, which hurts monetization.
Indeed. In the end someone has to pay, and/or someone has to make some money to pay. It seems close to a zero-sum game - which is the point of capitalism and innovation, allowing technology to reach 100% of people and/or make the next unit of production equal to $0, and with digital software, it comes pretty damn close to $0 benefit for the next user.
As to App.net being more of a cause than a product, I disagree. App.net's form is formless. That users are projecting their hopes on the API is the idea. The difference is the users (mainly devs) are being empowered to build out those hopes.
The Twitter interface is just a use case of a realtime API. People waiting for Dalton to build the killer use case have missed the point. Look to the chaps that are paying $100/ year.