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Comment by il | Hacker News Reader

Yes, how dare this company focus on making as much money as possible.

They should be focusing on getting a ton of VC funding and flipping the company to Facebook instead.

Your argument is essentially "App.net is going to fail because it has a business model." Take a step back and think about that.

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The argument is that App.net has a business model that isn't going to work, not that it has a business model at all. A business model doesn't guarantee revenue, here is a business model I am going to sell rubberbands for $1000 a piece and it only costs me $.05 to make them. Great business model but that isn't going to get many people to buy. This is a very niche product that will work if the expectations are kept in check and they understand what they have is a niche product. There is nothing wrong with having such a product you just have to make sure your goals are aligned with that. I wouldn't consider myself the average user for these services (Twitter, Facebook) at all as my knowledge on tech is far beyond the normal user and I have absolutely no issues with the way these services are monetizing. The average consumer who uses the services couldn't care less about the ads nor would they pay anywhere near the amount being proposed.

I for one don't even notice the ads in Twitter. Where are they? That's either a good or bad thing. Good, in that it's not a huge nuisance to me. Bad, in that Twitter isn't doing a great monetizing users.

The ads are sponsored tweets, if you are using an extension like adblock then you probably don't see them but regardless they are very unobtrusive ads that don't pose much of a nuisance.

It will so long as that model inhibits people from joining.

There's no business model without an actual business. That's what the OP is saying.

They've done over $500K in sales in a few weeks, how much money does your "actual business" make?

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