And if you grow the user-base fast you've won, right? Lock-in and network effects matter enormously. Saying you can't lock-in the social graph neither guarantees a company won't lock-in elsewhere nor guarantees this is an appealing platform on which to develop.

This isn't a morality tale, I'm just pointing out what kind of decisions would be made around App.net and that the Vine/Instagram example doesn't really make sense.