Dalton Caldwell has announced that they have crowdsourced the funding they needed to launch their App.net platform.

App.net is pretty similar to Twitter in concept. They are going to charge for the platform. It would remain free of any advertising.

http://vimeo.com/46394859

Third party development has already started and some concept third party apps are now available.

Caldwell said:

Please understand that we built a functional web application and working API to demonstrate that App.net is not “vaporware”. We have a great deal of work to do.

And he thanked all the backers of the project:

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 blog posts in our support. Thank you.