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What Diaspora Should Do with their Newfound Fuckyoufacebook Money

blog.nextny.org

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Re: What Diaspora Should Do with their Newfound Fuckyoufacebook Money

#11

Post by seldo »

marak wrote: post #10
dRother wrote: post #6

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And maybe hire some experienced programmers/project managers to architect the system first? My experience with the code put out by fresh CS graduates is that it's a bit naive and by-the-textbook, not surprisingly.

there is a dearth of quality programmers in nyc who would help im sure

Do you mean a glut, or do you really think there are no good programmers in NYC?

Re: What Diaspora Should Do with their Newfound Fuckyoufacebook Money

#12

Post by hugh3 »

derekc wrote: post #4
iamdave wrote: post #2

I'm perturbed that "Get to work" is number 5. Get to work, build a product. Build a good product. The rest will fall into place.

Should be #1 on that list.

You might think so. But coding is the easiest part of what they need to do. Not only do they need to figure out exactly what feature set they need to implement, they need to have a plan to steal facebook users, a way of scaling up, and a counter-response to any response that facebook might attempt. This can't be a release-and-refine job -- their first version will launch with some media fanfare and unless it rapidly gains momentum it will fail.

Writing some code isn't the first step here any more than "fire some bullets" is the first step towards invading a country.

Re: What Diaspora Should Do with their Newfound Fuckyoufacebook Money

#13

Post by benatkin »

seldo wrote: post #11
marak wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

there is a dearth of quality programmers in nyc who would help im sure

Do you mean a glut, or do you really think there are no good programmers in NYC?

The "who would help" part is relevant here.

Re: What Diaspora Should Do with their Newfound Fuckyoufacebook Money

#16

Post by seiha »

pc wrote: post #14

Yishan Wong (early Facebook employee) gave an excellent answer to this question on Quora: http://www.quora.com/What-are-the-potential-obstacles-to-Dia... . (Quora is still in private beta, but I'd imagine many HNers have accounts.)

I don't, but I'm interested in reading now that you've mentioned.

Re: What Diaspora Should Do with their Newfound Fuckyoufacebook Money

#17

Post by frederickcook »

So, as I understand it, all this money is to work on an open source project, which is quite different than a startup. Now a well-done open source project inevitably leads to a company (Wordpress, MySQL, etc.) but that isn't what they said they were going to do with the money. (Somebody has to host all these nodes for joe-everybody.)

Are there contractual obligations of raising money with Kickstarter, or can they use this for legal fees?

If they can't use the money for a startup, I doubt they'd have trouble raising money for a company separately, though investors know that any software product developed will be open source.

Re: What Diaspora Should Do with their Newfound Fuckyoufacebook Money

#18

Post by mortenjorck »

dRother wrote: post #6
bradly wrote: post #5

Write some code.

And maybe hire some experienced programmers/project managers to architect the system first? My experience with the code put out by fresh CS graduates is that it's a bit naive and by-the-textbook, not surprisingly.

Architecture and user experience. They can afford some consultation time with the best in the business on both fronts right now, and both will be critical to their success.

Re: What Diaspora Should Do with their Newfound Fuckyoufacebook Money

#19

Post by seldo »

frederickcook wrote: post #17

So, as I understand it, all this money is to work on an open source project, which is quite different than a startup. Now a well-done open source project inevitably leads to a company (Wordpress, MySQL, etc.) but that isn't what they said they were going to do with the money. (Somebody has to host all these nodes for joe-everybody.) Are there contractual obligations of raising money with Kickstarter, or can they use…

The original request was for $10,000 to cover their living expenses for 3 months. Now they have $170k, they really have no obligation to do anything with it other than support themselves for 3 months. So anything else is just gravy. Which is why it is so COMPLETELY ridiculous that they have been given so much money, especially given that they don't have a product or even a detailed design of a product. They just have a lot of good intentions.
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