This guy wants to build a new, better Twitter

“This guy” is Dalton Caldwell, former CEO of streaming music service Imeem, the guy who built Picplz that got leapfrogged by Instagram, and now founder of App.net.

Dalton is the guy who wrote the post about the Twitter could have been, which I linked to last week. And now he’s trying to raise $500,000 to fund a new, Twitter-like service that pledges to always be open to developers and never put advertisers before users. Here’s his “audacious proposal.”

Interesting.

Given how trendy crowdfunding campaigns are these days, I think he might actually be able to raise the money. (I’m in for $50, why not?)

The real question, of course, is whether enough people will use the new service to make it fun and interesting. Social networks become exponentially more useful and valuable as more people join. And I don’t think most of the people I follow on Twitter give a damn about switching to a new Twitter — especially one they have to pay for.

Then, of course, the problem of living up to your promises. (One potential problem is that this is still one company controlling everything.)

But why not try?