The first thing I would do is hire someone to take care of PR so I could focus on coding.
What Diaspora Should Do with their Newfound Fuckyoufacebook Money
31–40 of 53 posts
Re: What Diaspora Should Do with their Newfound Fuckyoufacebook Money
#32They should look at SocNodes: http://www.socnode.org/
In particular, there is some real, actual, working code: http://www.socnode.org/code, using PubSubHub for near-instant updates across multiple distributed sites.
The code there is in Python, but there is a (my) half-Java implementation linked from there too.
Re: What Diaspora Should Do with their Newfound Fuckyoufacebook Money
#33Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
If it works, it won't seem ridiculous at all. I like the pluralism of this experiment. The odds are nothing will come of it, but that's what the odds nearly always are.
I would have preferred to give 17 teams $10k rather than gamble $170k on these guys. The whole situation is a mess.
Re: What Diaspora Should Do with their Newfound Fuckyoufacebook Money
#34Some expectation management is in order. A message along the lines like: "We are going to proceed deliberately, in a step-by-step fashion. We are going to start small with X, then add Y and Z.". Then they should then follow that up by releasing early and often.
I think they provided that but it just wasn't obvious from the current entry of their blog. Check this out: http://joindiaspora.com/2010/04/30/a-response-to-mr-villa.ht... What do you think?
With all the hype, I actually had really low expectations.
But their plan seems really good - do as little practical themselves, produce a good protocol, go from there.
I'm look forward to their plan.
Re: What Diaspora Should Do with their Newfound Fuckyoufacebook Money
#35They should look at SocNodes: http://www.socnode.org/ In particular, there is some real, actual, working code: http://www.socnode.org/code , using PubSubHub for near-instant updates across multiple distributed sites. The code there is in Python, but there is a (my) half-Java implementation linked from there too.
Looks nice but SocNodes doesn't solve the problem of limiting information to friends.
It's a nice simple idea though, and perhaps it could be one layer of a solution.
Re: What Diaspora Should Do with their Newfound Fuckyoufacebook Money
#36Earlier quoted context omitted.
Since when I registered for Quora the TOS said my content could be pasted anywhere as long as there was a link back, I'm assuming it's okay to paste Wong's answer here as well. I couldn't find anything on their site that specifically says what license the content falls under, if someone finds out differently, lmk and I'll remove it. Yishan Wong, Worked at Facebook from 2005-2010. "As it stands, based on available tec…
I see this argument about Disapora a fair bit: >Diaspora apparently requires you to run your own set of web hosting services in preserve your privacy, which no one really cares about To me, this reads the same as "having an email address requires you to run your own email server". If Diaspora takes off, I'm sure it will be another check-box on ISP features lists.
Didn't we go down this path with email? We had ISPs running SMTP servers, until consumers voted with their clicks (Hotmail, Gmail) that they'd much prefer a centralized solution and were happy to trade in privacy for a free almost-always-up, for-the-foreseeable-future permanent solution. Isn't that Facebook?
Re: What Diaspora Should Do with their Newfound Fuckyoufacebook Money
#37Earlier quoted context omitted.
I see this argument about Disapora a fair bit: >Diaspora apparently requires you to run your own set of web hosting services in preserve your privacy, which no one really cares about To me, this reads the same as "having an email address requires you to run your own email server". If Diaspora takes off, I'm sure it will be another check-box on ISP features lists.
Didn't we go down this path with email? We had ISPs running SMTP servers, until consumers voted with their clicks (Hotmail, Gmail) that they'd much prefer a centralized solution and were happy to trade in privacy for a free almost-always-up, for-the-foreseeable-future permanent solution. Isn't that Facebook?
I administer the mail for a local ISP, 10k domains.
I think the idea of a Balkanised Facebook is a good one, esp. if was business related. Keeping in touch with customers and aligned groups in a relaxed place but without the threat of one of your personal friends posting pictures of what you did on your drunken weekend away.
Re: What Diaspora Should Do with their Newfound Fuckyoufacebook Money
#38Earlier quoted context omitted.
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…
> But coding is the easiest part of what they need to do. I agree that it's easy, but it's also time consuming. They originally gave themselves 3 months -- that's a vanishingly small amount of time to produce any kind of fully working product.
They originally gave themselves 3 months -- that's a vanishingly small amount of time to produce any kind of fully working product.
The first revision of Facebook (then Thefacebook) was written in about one week, IIRC.
Re: What Diaspora Should Do with their Newfound Fuckyoufacebook Money
#39Yishan 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.)
Since when I registered for Quora the TOS said my content could be pasted anywhere as long as there was a link back, I'm assuming it's okay to paste Wong's answer here as well. I couldn't find anything on their site that specifically says what license the content falls under, if someone finds out differently, lmk and I'll remove it. Yishan Wong, Worked at Facebook from 2005-2010. "As it stands, based on available tec…
"Diaspora can open-source the code and allow other Diaspora installations to be set up, in case users don't trust Diaspora itself - a particular group of real-life friends who mutually trust each other can just host their own Diaspora installation and store their own information there."
Would you rather have Facebook employees, who don't specifically know or care about you have access to eg. personal conversations btw. you and your friends OR your friends, who might be the ones you're talking about?
Re: What Diaspora Should Do with their Newfound Fuckyoufacebook Money
#40My advice: Clone Cloud27 [1] and get an initial version for people to play with.
Then fill out the more distributy bits later.
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[1] http://cloud27.com/ its BSD licensed (IIRC) so should be good to clone/fork immediately