Early adopters can now follow me on App.net at alpha.app.net/foomandoonian.

I’m not really sold on ADN yet, though I really do hope it succeeds. It all feels a little too ‘Diaspora’ to me though – a smart idea, but too geeky to break through and become a mainstream service. The price-drop from $50 to $36 should help though.

App.net is a terrible name (it sounds like a Microsoft platform) and the alpha demo site looks grey and dull compared to Twitter. I realise neither of these things are key selling features of the service, but first impressions do count.

Maybe great clients like Netbot will change all that. According to Appnetizens, at least 30% of ADN users are Netbot users, and it has only been out for 8 days.

My understanding is that alpha.app.net will eventually go away and the entire ecosystem will be run on the back of third-party clients. It seems like this will be a great opportunity for a canny web developer to build a branded ADN web client. My understanding is that the twitter.com website has always been the most popular way to use Twitter, despite there also being many successful clients.

I think the perfect price for ADN would be around $5-10. Cheap enough that anyone can afford it, but enough to discourage the trolls and spammers. Metafilter take this approach:

Due to the bursting size of the community, its use of resources, and the cost of running the servers, all new users have a one-time $5 charge, to help defray these costs. If you sign up an account to pimp your product, act like an ass, or generally just do things that break the guidelines you will be booted and there will be no refunds.

Developer accounts at $100 still seems reasonable to me.

Anyway, I’m on ADN for now. It’s very quiet over there, but unless people like me take the plunge it will probably remain that way. If you are so inclined, please join up and follow me!

My favourite feature so far: 256 characters!