Oh brother ! The "me against the world" syndrome works only when you have figured out the world enough to play it - not when you run around announcing your victimization.

Great piece Jenn - this truly hits at Dalton's story and why he is buildling app.net Gotta respect his guts - it has been interesting to learn the motivating back story. I agree 100% with what Twitter could have become. However, my approach would have been to raise money from twitter users, buy Twitter, and make it an open platform.

This is exactly how Noah Everett reacted when Twitter screwed him over (he founded TwitPic, then a couple years later, Twitter launched its own photo-sharing feature and kinda drowned him). See: http://venturebeat.com/2011...

It's also exactly how UberMedia reacted when Twitter bought Tweetie and TweetDeck and put its clients at risk: http://venturebeat.com/2011...

But it never, ever works. This is sour grapes bullmess, and it'll end just like Diaspora and Identica (remember that one?).

The fact of the matter is, Facebook and Twitter fought hard for the control they have, and they have the absolute right to use their users, their APIs, and their data in any way they like. It's not nice, but it's fair. It's not some great freakin' injustice. It's BUSINESS.

I wish I could upvote you and downvote you at the same time. I understand not wanting to be intimidated into being acqui-hired, but your points are very valid. He's getting great publicity, though.

If he can find a way to win mobile, I'm sitting in a college house full of people who prefer Instagram to Facebook. How? I have no idea... He has to hope one of the developers who signed up has something that really brings value-added

Google has built a mature community around the Google Apps platform for Government, Education, Business and Not for Profit. The icing going on the cake now is very fluid and primarily users control how and what they use very easily. The point being, the tech surely is there, and usable to anyone for free and next to free for the quality. Google+ wraps all this nicely together, privately without ads, paid for secure dynamic communities, full UCC with industry leading security innovation and free editions that are allowed to grow naturally as use demands. This is a 4 year old with a confident demeanor.

Yes, there are open source repositories with excellent potential. This just sounds like Google++ with a grudge to scratch. No matter, the concept has strong potential, customers willing.

You dont need 500k to build an app.net. Most of the needed tech exist in Open Source.

Remember when Zuckerberg invested in Diaspora?

Hi Caldwel, it doesnt make sense (at least to me) to have ad-free social network. What u can do is share the profit with users.
Otherwise, support Google+ instead of facebook.