In November 2012, it launched a free trial program to bring more users onto the site, but over the long-term, everyone had to pay for the service. This probably lost the company users, which is why it implemented a freemium offering several months later. By May 2013, there were 100,000 users.
If you hadn’t heard about App.net until now, you’d be forgiven. Activity around the platform essentially slowed to a crawl several years ago when App.net shifted into “maintenance mode.” This was done to protect what little funds the company had left. “Since then, every dollar App.net has charged has gone toward paying for the hosting and services needed to keep the site running,” Caldwell and Berg wrote in their farewell post on the site. But few investment opportunities have come up, which left the two with no way of reviving the service.
I was a paid App.net user. It’s a shame to see them go. The more I wish Twitter offered pay-tiers for an ad-free experience, the more I see cases where this route didn’t work. Charging for a social network simply doesn’t work.