App.net turned a year old yesterday and marked the occasion by
announcing $2.5 million in new funding, while also sharing several other updates on its growth and plans for the future.
Founder Dalton Caldwell revealed that the funding has come from the services existing investors, and says App.net raised the money because “we want our developer and member community to be confident that App.net is on strong financial ground and here to stay.”
That community is small, and is no threat to the likes of Twitter or Facebook, but that doesn’t seem to be the point. App.net has purposely gone out of its way to do things differently than mainstream social networks. For starters, it launched as a paid membership service (and has since added a limited free service tier, too). App.net is also ad-free, and pays developers based on how much App.net users use and enjoy their apps.
One of the updates Caldwell shared yesterday is that the service is paying developers $30,000 per month, and has paid out more than $220,000 total since the Developer Incentive Program launched late last year.
In its first year, App.net has moved beyond being a social network in the way we think of Twitter, Facebook, LinkedIn and others. It offers APIs related to file storage, search, messaging and location, and developers are building standalone apps off of App.net’s platform.
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