Would you mind elaborating why you think App.net thinks too small, and where the market disruption is indicated by how Google Reader collapsed?
Understand that I primarily stare at a shell most of the day, so I'm not completely savvy on newer startups. Google Reader shutting down just made me check out newsbeuter sooner rather than later :). App.net just seems like a Twitter competitor with longer strings; what do you see?
Google Reader's demise is really strong proof that Larry Page is obsessed with Google Plus to the point of depravity. There are alternatives, but that doesn't distract from the point: _Google_, one of the bright centers of the Internet, is behaving with abject incompetence.
Google just made a huge mistake. It made that mistake because of a huger mistake in trying to compete with Facebook.
People don't like Facebook. The technically illiterate might allow it into their lives, but they have no loyalty to it.
However, Facebook is the center of mass for people's online selves. App.net _is_ just a Twitter competitor with longer strings.
And in a certain sense it only makes sense that the center of this social media nonsense gets shut down.
There'll be a new Facebook soon. Hopefully a better one.
I agree with there being a new Facebook. If you look at Internet companies, after about the 7-8 year mark, they either rebuild, rebrand, and get better...or someone else comes along and makes a better mouse trap.
Although I use Facebook extensively, I do see where someone could come in and make a better one. The only thing is we have never seen something with the tentacles that Facebook & twitter have. Go to almost any page on the Internet and I can guarantee you'll see a "share" button. Did MySpace have that? I mean 1 out of every 12 people on the planet uses Facebook.
I am not tying to pessimistic, and I hope someone will take them off their high horse, but how will a service displace something that has over 1 billion active users? Maybe that just adds to the point that it is past their prime. Humans like the latest, greatest, shiniest this and that...so maybe everyone is ready to move on.
Hopefully multiple services will displace Facebook. Facebook's 1 billion+ users use Facebook in so many different ways. I don't want to share a service with the "friends" who simply want to send me game invitations, show me the dinner they just cooked. . .or fight in public.
Understand that I primarily stare at a shell most of the day, so I'm not completely savvy on newer startups. Google Reader shutting down just made me check out newsbeuter sooner rather than later :). App.net just seems like a Twitter competitor with longer strings; what do you see?