I'm stepping away from App.net. It was a hard decision but I think I made the right move.

When I first read about App.net I was already in the Twitter doldrums. I was annoyed with the lack of post length, the lack of a business model and the growing number of spam accounts that automatically followed you. I was disliking Twitter more and more by the day.

The 22nd of August 2012. That was the day I signed up for App.net. It was heralded as the social network for those that want more control over their data, a service that isn't afraid to charge it's customers for the privilage of using their service. At first it was seen as a great move. A sustainable social network. It sounded so great. I promptly signed up.

It started out so promising. There was already a micro-blogging client, an API and the promise of more to come. More did come. With a better API, developers shipped clients for all the major mobile platforms. There was a number of nice services that were born off the back of the App.net API. After the initial launch hype, subscriptions tailed off and the App.net community carried on. For the first year things looked so great. It was all going so well.

Over the course of the second year there were a number of new features including a notifications system for everyone as well as a crowdfunding platform for people to validate their product ideas. In the community there was a lot of discussion about the future of App.net. So many people were interested and cared for the future of it.

Ever since the App.net State of the Union post from the App.net blog though, the future of the social network has looked uncertain. Prominent subscribers to App.net have stopped posting or in some cases just completely deleted their accounts. For the last few months my timeline has appeared to be less and less active. While most days you might get a conversation on a particular topic, some days it feels like you're just talking to yourself. The buzz around App.net has died and what's been left behind is the remnants of a what could have been a great service.

For the last couple of weeks I've been weighing up whether I should continue to dedicate my time to using App.net. "You get what you put in" is a popular opinion of why you should continue to use any social network and it does hold true, but sometimes you just have to quit regardless of how much you want to participate. For me it was just a lack of interaction that made me decide to leave. People did participate in conversations but it just wasn't as frequent as it previously had been on App.net.

Over the last two years, App.net has been home from home. A stream of people I've connected with on a daily basis. Posts, links, images, polls and stories all shared in a little corner of the Internet. I don't regret the time that I have spent there. It's been a great experience and I've connected with some great people but it's time to move on.