Categories
Cloud

The Advantage of App.Net

Steve Streza: One other cool benefit of using App.net for the backend is that the data specification is publicly available. This means other developers could build apps that recognize your journal. So, if the developer of your favorite camera app adds support for Ohai journals, they could save those photos into your journal. Then, the next time you open Ohai, those photos are available. Other developers could build journaling apps for other platforms like Android, or even write competitive apps for iPhone. You as the user would not have to export your data and re-import it; it would just all appear when you logged in. It’s a wonderful deal for customers to have no lock-in at all, with open data standards for interoperability.”

Ohai, Steve’s new app, is an app for keeping track of life moments. Similar to Vesper, from Q Branch, but this application has storage in the magical cloud. Not only does it make use of cloud technologies it’s using App.Net to do it. I think this is important because most people think of App.Net as a Twitter clone. It’s way more than that. It’s a set of API’s and infrastructure that allow people to build deeply connected applications. App.Net, the social network, is one example of the infrastructure and API’s. Ohai is another. Steve even points out that others could create other applications that can have access to the data. Why? Well, it’s your data. You decide who gets to see it.

Very cool app.

Categories
Business Cloud Social

The real Communication Network

Matt Gemmell: “The interesting part, though, is what you won’t be used to from Twitter. There are no ads, anywhere. Because it’s a paid service, there’s no spam at all; I’ve certainly never seen any. There’s an active and happy developer community, which ADN actually financially rewards. There’s a rich, modern, relentlessly improved API. And again because it’s a paid service, there’s a commensurately (and vanishingly) low number of Bieber fans, teenagers, illiterates, and sociopaths.”

I joined App.Net back in August and since that time a nice community has sprung up. There are a number of apps available to make the experience better and those numbers grow every day. Unlike Twitter developers are encouraged to develop unique and exciting applications, they even pay for the right to access the API. Imagine that, an entire social where the users actually pay to be a part of it. What a concept.

App.Net is creating the communications platform Twitter abandoned in favor of becoming an advertising company. The Twitter like experience is just one of many different types of applications being built on this platform.

If you’re interested, drop me a line and I’ll pass on an invite for a free account.