You're missing the point. He doesn't have to create a closed platform for paying members only. He just need to have enough paying members to maintain the platform.
Wikipedia is free and has no ads, but survives thanks to its "paid members" (i.e., donors). Still open and free of ads for everybody (well, except for that one month that you see Jimmy Wales' banners all the time :)).
Yes, somebody has to pay the bills on app.net. Maybe it'll be 10,000 core hackernews users. If it gets traction, maybe he'll find enough corporate supporters and donors to keep it afloat. Maybe he'll be able to create an ecosystem where devs pay to get premium services, or some revenue sharing model (like Apple/Android).
There's tons of options to make money without having to sell its user base like twitter/fb. That's the approach he's taking.
It's not an easy challenge, but kudos to Dalton for trying. I'm a backer, and a strong supporter of the initiative. Not because I'm against ads (quite the opposite; I work at a marketing agency), but there's a clear conflict of interest between companies whose product is to sell their user base - fb, twitter - versus those that focus on users - wikipedia, dropbox, etc.
Wikipedia is free and has no ads, but survives thanks to its "paid members" (i.e., donors). Still open and free of ads for everybody (well, except for that one month that you see Jimmy Wales' banners all the time :)).
Yes, somebody has to pay the bills on app.net. Maybe it'll be 10,000 core hackernews users. If it gets traction, maybe he'll find enough corporate supporters and donors to keep it afloat. Maybe he'll be able to create an ecosystem where devs pay to get premium services, or some revenue sharing model (like Apple/Android).
There's tons of options to make money without having to sell its user base like twitter/fb. That's the approach he's taking.
It's not an easy challenge, but kudos to Dalton for trying. I'm a backer, and a strong supporter of the initiative. Not because I'm against ads (quite the opposite; I work at a marketing agency), but there's a clear conflict of interest between companies whose product is to sell their user base - fb, twitter - versus those that focus on users - wikipedia, dropbox, etc.