Teradome.

As always, it’s time for another shift in how this blog gets used. This time I’m motivated by the introduction of App.net, the new kid on the block of social networks—or at least, social platforms—and what that means for Twitter and to an extent everyone else.

Why did App.net succeed in its funding? Basically, it’s because people stopped trusting Twitter. Twitter hits a sweet spot for a lot of people when it comes to simple, asynchronous, public chat, but thanks to the combination of poorly targeted ads, hostility to client developers who have arguably introduced some of Twitter’s best features, and promise of features that no user asked for (the “apps within Tweets” vision in recent coverage), the message users and developers have gotten is “the free ride is over, we’re now going to do what we want with it.”

So it’s not that surprising that a paid ride appeared and got support. If the promise is that being paid is what will keep it afloat and not these bizarre extensions that make it a media platform and not a messaging one, it’s a good promise and worth the price they’ve set on it.

But now this means yet another network to check in on. And with this, I’ve realized that I’ve made a bit of a social mess with my current accounts that I’d like to do some housekeeping on.

Here’s what will happen, plus some thoughts:

• Tumblr: teradome.com will become all original posts only. It’s funny timing because I just caught sight of the Marco.org post on how we all can’t be Daring Fireball, and I think a lot of blogs recently wanted to follow form with @gruber and maybe reap some of his success with the format. I won’t repeat the post, but my point is, having a blogging platform in addition to all of these others is an opportunity to control one’s voice to the fullest, and not fill it with random asides. I’ve kept Teradome fairly focused, but I’d like to bring that real authority of opinion back, and add things only when there’s a complete post and thought attached. Just “sharing” has been solved by a number of other systems. Which leads us to…

• Google+: Hard to say why I still am interested in this, but I’d like to try using this as the linkblog for now. Furthermore, I’m going to use it like web comments. I think that if Google had focused more on G+ integration as a comments platform, and providing better social graph features than Facebook Comments, it would have been a better way to compete than trying to push group video chat which remains an interest of power users only. It also gives me an excuse to use their social buttons when I see them.

• Facebook: Somehow, throughout all of their updates, Facebook still remains top-of-mind as a place where I can be sure my real friends see something. To that point, I don’t deliberately share things into my Timeline unless it’s something I want them to see. I’ve stopped merely liking stories and Facebook Comments entirely, and most apps I connect to my account (for login purposes) I set viewable to “only me.” Some bots slip through, but on the whole, it works and I don’t see myself messing with it any further. Groups, messenger, and the occasional broadcast. OK.

• Twitter: Ah yes. Back to Twitter. Twitter has always been an extended conversation for me. It started as a big chatroom, like the best networking party you could have stumbled into, but less and less, people have been freely talking about what’s on their minds. It’s become another sharing node, where Pulse or Zite or something else just echoes headlines & links into the feed. Oh, and the spam! The fake followers! Random mentions that you have to see at least once because there’s no filtering! And a client that still doesn’t hide a tweet once you’ve marked it as spam.

I have to stop and acknowledge that App.net isn’t just another stab at a Laconi.ca (now Status.net). In most ways these two are not alike and it’s why App.net has different founding support than the open-source Twitter competitor did.

Laconi.ca aimed to be an open-source, decentralized microblog. The pitch was anyone could run their own Twitter, but in reality few people really wanted to because Laconi.ca decentralized conversations. By forcing people to choose a forum to start in, it immediately limited the audience, and removed all serendipity to the microblog experience. Microblogs are as much about chatting as they are eavesdropping, and to make the latter powerful, you really have to hang out under only one set of eaves. Dave Winer has again offered his opinions about a decentralized Twitter, but he continues to describe publishing, not conversation. Otherwise he’s describing a form of bulletin boards, and we already have those. That’s not the point. I suspect people who backed App.net are people who deeply loved the early days of Twitter, when you woke up, opened the Global Feed, and just started new conversations with random people.

“App.net won’t survive.” OK. Let’s try, and see if it doesn’t. No sense in giving up before we’ve started. But here’s what I see is the model of how it will survive:

• ADN makes a promise that its business is servicing paying users.
• If ADN breaks its promise, then people stop paying, and ADN as it is will fold.
• Therefore, ADN now has an interest to keep active users happy with features that make it a fundamentally better authoring platform.

And that’s the key. So if it fails in its mission, then it will have been a worthwhile experiment, but it’s certainly an experiment worth supporting.