App.net is a bit of an odd duck. First, there’s the name, which is terrible. Conceptually, it’s kind of hard to wrap your head around and sell to your friends. It’s like Twitter, but you have to pay for it? But there’s also storage, like Dropbox, and people are building apps on the network (“oh, appdotnet, I get it. Wait.”) that are really nothing like Twitter.

I’ve been giving it a go mostly because the “figuring it out” part reminds me of mid-2007 era Twitter, but different. My pal Guy English put it smartly: this is for distilled insight, not quips, and I’ve found that mostly to be about right. Partly because you get more characters (bytes, not wisenheimers) but also because it feels different – it’s embarrassing to just crack jokes is about the only way I can put it.

Different, of course, does not mean better. For the most part, the talk is still very nerdy, very meta, the denizens too homogeneous. Kinda like the early days of Twitter.

The thing that’s missing is you. Statistically, if you’re reading this, you’re probably not on app.net, and that’s a shame. I’m a believer in Metcalfe’s Law and I’m interested in seeing if app.net can really branch into something different or if it will always just lie in the shadow of Twitter.

The folks behind app.net are really doing some incredible work. They’ve added new features and changed directions at an incredible clip, it’s been impressive to watch the growth and change. The ethos just sits right with me – I’m valued not as a faceless “user” to be monetized to brands, but as someone who contributes, in his own small way, to making the sum better.

And, they’ve been kind enough to give me a hundred free invites if you sign up via this link: https://join.app.net/from/jimray. The free tier has some limitations – you can only follow 40 other people, there’s less storage, that kinda thing – but it’s a great way to see if there really is anything to this un-Twitter.

A while back, there was some boastful kvetching about how app.net was better because of its exclusivity, in direct contradiction to what we know about the power of network effects, that its country clubbiness kept it nice and pristine. That kind of thinking is in every way antithetical to what I want from the world, and certainly the internet, so come on and muss it up a bit, won’t you?