Take the example of a cleaning service. People don’t get outraged that their cleaner charges money.¹

Amy Worrall really nails it in regards to the negative voices that’s currently being raised toward app.net.

I dont’t see why some people have such a hard time seeing why a web service charging money from their users can be a good thing. Any business needs customers, someone who pay for their product. Web services, applications etc. also needs users. Either the customer and the user are the same person, or we have the more common situation where the user is what is actually being sold to the actual customer; the advertisers. This is what I like to call the Customer or Cattle situation, or dilemma.

Personally I prefer being the customer, but if what a service offers me is good enough, or their monetization of me is unobtrusive and non-evil enough, I can consider being a cattle as well. Twitter has been a great example of that. But as of this weeks announcement of API rules changes the situation is likely to change.²