We're pleased to join the app.net movement

Earlier this week, we, the Telax family, decided to back a new social media platform called app.net, and after perusing its pages, watching the video, and reading the global feed on the alpha site, I was struck by how far our communication capabilities have advanced, and how valuable those advancements are to us now.

When I was growing up, the telephone was an awesome and terrifying item hanging in our kitchen with a ridiculously long cord, necessary for ‘mobility’. It was awesome because I could use the phone to talk to friends, thank my grandma at Christmas time, and every time it rang there was an excited hush as we all waited for whoever answered it to tell us to whom the caller wished to speak, usually my sister. But there was a dark side to the telephone as well. The potential for excessive long distance charges, salesmen that had a knack for keeping you on the phone indefinitely, and phone numbers with 9s and 8s in them, which made the dialing process agonizingly slow on a rotary phone. Thinking back to those days, I can’t help but marvel at how far we’ve come and how many more communication methods exist today, methods that aren’t labeled ‘one at a time’.

There are still pitfalls and peaks in the modern world of communication, (my sister’s hogging of the phone is a lesser concern these days) but solutions seem to arise as quickly as problems, and we don’t solely rely on only one or two forms of communication anymore. Now there are landlines, cell phones, internet phones, chat windows, text messaging, social media sites and apps, and even more options on the way. App.net is one of these new options, or perhaps a new twist on an existing option. They’re a social media platform that focuses on app development and clear, concise communication from the company to its members, and from member to member. How could we resist supporting that?

One specific goal of app.net is to eliminate the need for advertising as a means to pay for the service. Yes, that means it costs money for subscribers, but once you’re in, there’s nothing impeding you, influencing you, or annoying you; it’s just open channels between subscribers. As we can all attest, it can be difficult to navigate through advertisements in order to get to the heart of something. It’s inefficient. Advertisers misdirect and get in the way, it’s the nature of that business, and it has a place, but it doesn’t have to be everywhere.

It's going to be interesting to see just how far app.net can go. How far they can advance social networking. Perhaps they'll create a system in which a person can see what's trending on Twitter without actually having to be on Twitter, as Andrew Chen suggests. The same with Facebook, or Pinterest, or Tumblr, etc... .

Whatever happens, app.net is focused on making it much easier for people to hear other people, and we think that’s pretty awesome.