App.net, a proposed new Twitter-like social networking service that would charge users an annual fee but refrain from selling ads in exchange, on Sunday afternoon narrowly raised its stated online funding goal of $500,000 in pledges, just 38 hours before a self-imposed deadline set up by creator Dalton Caldwell.
The deadline was designed to see if there would be enough general interest and financial backing by Web users for Caldwell and his team to proceed with building an entire social network from scratch. Over 8,000 backers pledged at least $50 to secure their own custom usernames and begin testing the social network, and their initial messages can be seen here.
Caldwell, a prominent critic of Twitter and Facebook, celebrated the news with a blog post thanking backers and promising to release funding details and a “terms of service” document next. As he wrote:
Thank you for believing. I know in my heart that what made join.app.net succeed was your willingness and openness to give App.net the benefit of the doubt, to read our github documentation, to ask to participate in the alpha, to write blogposts in our support. Thank you. We couldn’t have done it without you.
As Caldwell also noted, Web users still interested in the project who haven’t donated still have 36 hours left to pledge and pick their own custom usernames.
