What about identi.ca / status.net? Sounds like pretty much the same thing if you ask me… except that the other guys were 4 years earlier. Maybe somebody can enlighten me as to why app.net shouldn’t just bundle forces with status.net!
Much of the coverage of App.net — the ambitious project from entrepreneur Dalton Caldwell that just raised $500,000 through a Kickstarter-like crowdfunding campaign — has focused on the idea that Caldwell is building a “paid version of Twitter.” That has led a number of critics to complain that no one wants an alternative to Twitter and therefore App.net will almost certainly fail. But whether it succeeds or not, the idea behind the venture is actually much bigger than just building a paid Twitter clone. What Caldwell wants to do is create what he and others think Twitter could have been before it decided to become a global media entity: namely, a unified message bus for the social web, or a way of tying together multiple apps and services into a single real-time information delivery system.
via Think App.net is just a Twitter clone? Then you’re missing the point.