http://www.technologyreview.com/view...twitter-style/
Quote:
A social network that charges its users $50 a year would have been almost unimaginable just a few weeks ago, but is now a reality. A challenger to Twitter called App.net exceeded its crowdsourced funding target of $500,000 over the weekend, and will bid to make a profitable social network free of ads.
I previously wrote about App.net and its creators goals (see "A Social Network Free of Ads"). Now the project has received the money needed to go ahead, the real work begins, and the public scrutiny is already ramping up. As you might expect, many are expressing skepticism about the venture, for example tweeting that few Web users will want to pay when so many alternatives are free. Even users of App.net itself asking that it become significantly cheaper, or even offer a free tier (others vehemently oppose that idea).
With more than 11,000 people that have invested at least $50 in the project, App.net will probably have few problems in the short term. The “alpha” version of the network is already buzzing with conversation, albeit mostly about the project itself--its existing bugs and possible future features. Some third-party clients are already available, including Web services and iPhone apps at an early stage of development.
But, as of yesterday, only 3,500 people had actually begun using the service, mostly from the tech industry.
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Reading about app.net got me thinking. What companies have the resources to offer an ad-free social network free of charge to users? (aka use it as a loss leader).
Amazon: maybe something like users have to go to Amazon.com everytime they want to use the ad-free Amazon social network. Amazon benefits from the traffic. Or maybe an ad on the sign-on page only about an ebook or cds or whatever. Not really ad-free, but ad-free 95% of the page views. After signing on, it's ad free.
Amazon has a habit of doing thing at very low margin. Maybe a social network could be a good loss leader strategy as long as it is not too expensive to run and maintain.
Apple: well they have $100 billion in cash. A social network would help with their strategy. There were reports a few weeks ago about Apple trying to buy Twitter.
Thoughts?