And they will never get past that. I wouldn't mind it being stuck in stage one though. All the App.net spam has seriously degraded the HN quality overnight.
At least I know what app.net is. There are so many new things mentioned on HN every week that it's hard to keep up. Oh, CloudPython is up to version 2.1 you say? And now it supports 50% more bogons? Wow!
Oh come on, it's not that bad. There's never more than a few articles at once, and it's a legitimate hacker topic since anyone would have to be a fool to build on Twitter these days, and yet it is a very ripe API that people want to build on.
I think you are right. People want to build on App.net. The problem is ~10,000 people have signed up and there are already ~100 apps for app.net[1]. To me that sounds like a developer circle-jerk. Developers and other technophiles typically have disposable income, love to bash incumbents and jump on the next bandwagon. App.net satisfies all of those desires. It will be interested to see if anyone else really cares.
I just don't think trading one man's walled garden for another is what we need. We need an email-like solution to this problem. Something open and federated.
