App.net is indeed a very interesting, well, web app. But i don't see it becoming Twitter competitor in the near future. It's more an experiment of a business model and one that i think still needs to be tinkered with for a long, long time before it finally gains a traction.

The $50/year is problematically high for a social network. A LOT of people, especially regular people who don't care a lot about the integrity of the company behind their social network will be turned off by this. Unless Twitter starts placing the dick bar in every client they owned, i don't see it possible that people will start looking to app.net. Even then, i still can see another competitor rising up with a better pricing (or even free) to join.

Another factor is the complete removal of the random factor; i'd imagine there will be no random or parody username seeing as you need to pay $50 for a single username. You also can't experiment a lot without thinking about the cost.

The bottomline is i think they need to consider about having a hybrid business model where user can choose wether to see ads or pay the 50 bucks. Do you agree?

Well time will tell if this was the smartest or stupidest $50 I've ever spent. Posterous and Sparrow mostly just cost time.

What do you think about the danger of Twitter sueing app.net due to it appearing to be a more or less complete copy? Or were you just taking the risk?

I decided during the 'initial offering' to take a chance on app.net and at least try it as well. In light of Twitter's announcements yesterday, I am glad that I did.

It will be interesting over the next couple of months to see what ADN does to maintain it's momentum and possibly get a lot more users in.