App.net Goes Freemium, Is Still Invite-Only

App.net, the new social media service that looks to take on Twitter in a new and interesting way, is now a freemium service. Initially, it launched as a paid-only service after the project was successfully funded, but the company announced today that its introducing a free tier for those who don't want to pay up a monthly fee. However, those who want to become free members will still have to wait for an invite.

The paid service has different tiers for subscription types. Essentially, though, the more you pay, the more people you can follow and the more files you can upload and share. The service is a lot like in a sense, but without the annoying advertisements. Plus, developers are encouraged to build apps that expand on App.net's current framework.

App.net currently has just over 30,000 users with just a fraction using the service on a daily basis. The company says that the addition of a free tier will allow more users onto the service risk-free in order to bolster up the activity that the service gets in order, thus making App.net more appealing to possible paying members.

However, there are some obvious restrictions with free accounts on App.net, but thankfully none of them deal with advertisements. Free users will be limited to a max of 40 people to follow, and will only have access to 500MB of storage, with a max file size of 10MB. However, App.net will be giving away extra storage space to users who invite people that end up sticking around.