app.net is still laughable as a replacement for twitter. With the new apps it's now convenient to use a feed aggregation service that only accepts feeds from rich people, but it's still a feed aggregation service that only accepts feeds from rich people.
Not sure how $36/year is "rich". Cable TV costs more than that per month!
Personally, I'm sick of being sold to. Ad-supported is not the only business model in town and I'm not sure when using an ad-supported service over a paid one became a virtue. If this makes me "rich", ok.
App.net is just proof that at least a few people agree with me.
Cable TV has a much better value proposition than a Twitter alternative. There's no free alternative to cable TV with a comparable feature set.
I do think it's an exaggeration to say that app.net caters to the rich, but I can guarantee you that the demographics skew much more upper class, between being an app that is charged for and a service that mostly has interested hackers (who, nowadays, tend to be an affluent bunch, for better or worse).
Maybe no free alternative, but I avoid it like the plague. I watch good TV programming after-the-fact by buying DVDs.
Edit: Also, the value of a service like TV is something determined by the individual end-user. I don't think TV is more valuable than Twitter for everyone.
