I’m incredibly hesitant to join another social network because I’m currently under-going a significant personal purge of distractions but App.net keeps coming back to hit me and I keep getting asked when I’m going to seriously take a look at it and start using it.
The main reason that I’m not using it primarily is simply because the community I have around Twitter is long-standing and large and it’s not easy for me to abandon something that’s a big part of not only my daily routine of connection but also a source of valuable information about what’s going on in the industries that I’m following closely.
But I’ll admit, the self-curated network and even the paid-model they have is quite attractive and I keep taking a look at it as a possible place to spend more time.
There was a recent plugin that was uploaded to the WordPress repository that again reminded me to check out the network this morning: Posts to ADM is exactly what you think it might be:
Automatically posts your new blog articles to your App.net account.
Every time you publish a new article on your blog it’ll shoot it over to your App.net account. Installation was easy:
And then you have a light settings panel in your blog:
I’ve set this up on two of my current blogs to see if it send any traffic my way, which will be limited since I only have a few followers (but perhaps that’ll grow?!).
Culturally though App.net is probably more closely aligned with the WordPress ethos than Twitter. Take their 7 core values for example:
- We are selling our product, NOT our users. – We will never sell your personal data, content, feed, interests, clicks, or anything else to advertisers. We promise.
- You own your content. – App.net members always have full control of their data and the fundamental right to easily back-up, export, and delete ALL of their data, whenever they want.
- Our financial incentives are aligned with members and developers. – App.net’s financial incentives are entirely tied to successfully delivering a service you can depend on and that you would pay for.
- App.net employees spend 100% of their time improving our services for you, not advertisers. – Rather than waste engineering time developing new ways to sell your personal data to advertisers, 100% of our engineering and product team is focused on building the most innovative and reliable service we can.
- We are operating a sustainable, predictable business. – App.net will always have a clear business model. We know that depending on services that could go away or desperately squeeze users for more and more money is a toxic cycle. We want our ecosystem to rest easy that App.net is built on a financially solid foundation.
- We respect and value our developer community. – We believe that developers building on our platform are increasing the value of our service, and thus our financial interests are fundamentally aligned. We hope developers build large, robust businesses on top of our platform. We pledge to never shut down developers acting in good faith, even if it means that we will forgo some huge future revenue streams.
- Our most valuable asset is your trust. – Many people have become so cynical about user-hostile, privacy-violating social services that they refuse to participate at all. We can understand why. Earning your trust is the most important thing we can do. It won’t be easy, and we will make some mistakes, but we will do our best to be honest and transparent.
I like these principles although I have not yet experienced them first-hand as I haven’t been a part of the community much. I would hope they are being lived out and perhaps you’ve experienced them if you’ve been a part for some time.
Are you an Alpha App.net user? What are your thoughts about the service and the community? Is it worth a serious look?
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