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Are App.net's Crowdfunders Being Taken For a Ride?
snydeq writes "At least 10,000 people believe in App.net's vision of a messaging platform for Web apps — but it's unclear whether those people will be peers or sharecroppers, writes Simon Phipps. 'Last week App.net reached the milestone of 10,000 users who signed up for a new — mostly yet to be written — social network that looks like an early reimplementation of Twitter. Signing up people to claim user names on an (not vaporware) alpha Web service may not seem surprising or novel, but this time there's a difference: Everyone who signed up for App.net paid $50 for the privilege,' Phipps writes. 'App.net has used the crowdfunding approach, but it's not the same kind of project. While superficially similar — there's an offer of immediate use of its Twitter-clone service and reservation of the user ID of your choice — it's much more speculative. It's crowdsourcing the seed capital for a new venture, crowdsourcing the design, crowdsourcing the testing, and crowdsourcing most of the software that interacts with the venture, all without actually giving anyone but the founder a true stake in the outcome.'"
tell me how this is any different from xmpp+chatrooms+db+php rss feeds?
Because that's all it would take to create one of these.
But maybe I'm underthinking it or something.
Wow! I guess that's one way of looking at it...
There absolutely is the possibility for a scammer crowd-funding returns on their scam – don't get me wrong. That is something everyone who uses them should be on the look out for. In general, they wouldn't lose much (relative to other scams), but with enough people giving a little, a scam could make a killing.
But you act like this type of scamming is a new thing – it is not crowd-funding which has enabled it. How many scam charities have you heard about, both on or off-line. I would hardly claim Kickstarter and the like have enabled this any more than the internet or even the phone itself has. At least these sites have a bit of protection through a third party, rather than directly giving someone your CC info over the phone or over some fake charity site.
As for “Privatise the profit, socialise the risk and expense” I can only speak for my own experience. I have relatively recently decided to take a stab at crowd-funding my own project, to see if anyone wants to help – because I have quickly realized it is NOT going to happen without. And I take a (albeit, small) bit of offense with that misspelled claim.
So far, I have turned down a solid promotion, actually quit my job, taken out personal loans, and burned through my savings in order to work on a project I passionately believe in. When it has all come down to it, though, I do not have the money I need to make it self sufficient before I will run out and need to beg for my job back. I'm sure my experience isn't alone. Crowd-funding is a potential path forward.
If that is not enough risk for you – there is always the risk that I will be taking by releasing the info of a project which would normally be top secret in order to provide people with the information they need to make a decision on whether or not they would like to help. So if it is not successful, then I'm back to work – saving for a project that I have already told the world about. Oh well – that's what I signed up for!
In short: You're wrong.