App.net founder David Caldwell believes that current social websites think and operate backwards; advertisers are their customers, and users are only the product they sell to those advertisers. Caldwell plans to right the social media world with the release of app.net, an alternative to today's entrenched social media sites, most notably Twitter.

App.net has won the first skirmish in its battle against the social media behemoths, exceeding its $500,000 funding goal by more than $100,000 with a couple of days to spare. Donators of at least $50 earned a one-year membership to the site, and those who contributed at least $1,000, received phone support and developer tools for the site.

Those donor rewards display two of the key concepts of app.net: paid site membership and developer tools for a platform that promises to be open to all, in contrast to Twitter's ever-shrinking API framework.

Clearly, a core audience is ready to embrace the concept, as evidenced by the project's over 9,000 donors. However, the short lifespan of the internet has also demonstrated that asking users to pay for anything they can otherwise get for free is often an exercise in frustration.

With a limited base of people to socialize with initially, convincing a second wave of users to pay for a membership may prove problematic, regardless of the strengths the service may offer. People want to socialize with their friends and colleagues,and when those friends and colleagues are still on Facebook and Twitter, users have little incentive to make the leap to a new service.

Although App.net is unlikely to achieve success on the scale of Twitter or Facebook, the service could offer a valuable alternative to those who are willing to make the leap. The number of people who initially prove willing to make that leap will likely tell the story of app.net. The site will either build steam and grow into a viable social platform, even if only for a niche audience, or will quickly flounder and die without enough users.

Do you have any interest in app.net? Would you consider paying for a service that you could otherwise get for free through any number of other social media sites? Gives us your predictions on the success or failure of app.net in the comments.