From the beginning I've quietly predicted that if App.net is ever going to succeed, they will eventually end up going with a more traditional business model where they charge developers for the capacity their applications use (in my mind, they would end up resembling Firebase).
Dalton will write up some charismatic blog post about why this is the right move, and how it was really part of the plan all along. Some people will eat it up; others will call bullshit; and the world will keep turning.
Then 4 years later, he'll write a blog post on why selling the company to Twitter/Google/Facebook will be the best move. And how burnt out he is, and how he's leaving to pursue "other dreams". And people will congratulate him.
Good point. In the last App.net thread I said they'll probably need a killer app to get people to sign up. But if people are mostly in it for one app, why should that app settle for a slice of referral revenue? More likely the killer app would prefer to own the customer billing relationship and send a slice of revenue to App.net.
I don't see why we should criticize them too much if they change business models, though. If this was so easy that you could get it right on the first try, it would have been done already.
Dalton will write up some charismatic blog post about why this is the right move, and how it was really part of the plan all along. Some people will eat it up; others will call bullshit; and the world will keep turning.