Robb. Knight.

Timeline feels crowded

If anyone you follows mentions someone else (even if you don’t follow them), you see it in your timeline. Hopefully there will be an option for tweaking this in the future.

Global stream is awesome

As it stands, the global stream is totally readable and also a huge time waster for me. I get lost just looking through the global stream to watch for new conversations and the obligitory “Finally on the alpha. Hello App.net” posts. Although as I said last night the global stream isn’t sustainable:

There is no way the global stream can continue be to be useable if App.net takes off in the way that (presumably) is wanted by the founders.

Mobile is really important

I’ve tried a few App.net webapps namely shrtmsg and Appeio and although these are pretty good, I need a native iOS client to really make the most of the service. I’m using Ch.eer.io for notifications of mentions so at least I have push notifications. There are, of course, many iOS apps in the works but with everyone vying for a place on the betas, I may be waiting a while.

The money

As it stands, I’m more than happy with what I got for my $50, but in a years time am I going to want to pay again? And moreover, how many people do they need to become a sustainable business? 100,000? 200,000? I’m not sure I believe there is enough people willing to part with $50 a year, even if Twitter is going in an unfavourable direction.

Overall, I really like App.net. There are some problems, but this is an alpha not a fully-fledged product yet. Time will tell if they can get enough users to make it worth their while.

You can find me on App.net as rmlewisuk