A few weeks ago I signed up as a backer of App.net, an attempt at a paid, real-time social feed service built for users and developers rather than advertisers. If such a service is really possible and viable in the long run is far from clear, but at least it just reached the first goal: pledges of $500,000 in crowd-sourced funding.

An alpha of App.net is now live, and with the money pledged so far I assume we will eventually see at least a beta version. I certainly hope so, and that they (we?) will gain the momentum needed to build a long-term service that is free from the dependence on advertising. On App.net as on Twitter, I am @ksn. Maybe I will see you there?