Why Diaspora will fail
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Why Diaspora will fail
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Re: Why Diaspora will fail
#2Yeah there's no way a bunch of university students can compete with a big, established social networking site! Oh wait ...
Re: Why Diaspora will fail
#3That is one highly negative, pessimistic viewpoint, but I have to agree that he does have some valid points. I can't see that many people will have the technical skill to install Diaspora. They don't know what a server is and think that the internet is somehow magically inside their computer. Unless Diaspora finds some way to make running the server extremely simple people won't adopt it. Also they would have to educate their users on the basics of server operation. (Otherwise someone will start their Diaspora server, then turn the computer off and wonder why no one can see their profile.)
It sounds like a mess to me, and I agree that only the geekiest of people will even attempt to adopt it, and of those I wonder how many will stick with it.
Re: Why Diaspora will fail
#4Online video -> NYT article -> $170,000 handout -> lots of hard work -> great, successful product
The order and substance of these events are not how new, big, innovative things have been built in the past. If anything, it's like this:
lots of hard work -> failure -> even more hard work -> skepticism, ridicule (optional) -> failure -> even more hard work -> early adopters "get it" -> small successes -> more hard work -> big successes -> mainstream adoption -> donations/funding/etc -> NYT article -> success
Re: Why Diaspora will fail
#5Online video -> NYT article -> $170,000 handout -> lots of hard work -> great, successful product The order and substance of these events are not how new, big, innovative things have been built in the past. If anything, it's like this: lots of hard work -> failure -> even more hard work -> skepticism, ridicule (optional) -> failure -> even more hard work -> early adopters "get it" -> small successes -> more hard work…
What you're describing sounds like what I'm going through now with Braintrust. A small subset of people "get it" but there's still a lot of hard work ahead.
Re: Why Diaspora will fail
#6That is one highly negative, pessimistic viewpoint, but I have to agree that he does have some valid points. I can't see that many people will have the technical skill to install Diaspora. They don't know what a server is and think that the internet is somehow magically inside their computer. Unless Diaspora finds some way to make running the server extremely simple people won't adopt it. Also they would have to educ…
Each server is single-profile? If so, I agree that that's a terrible design. I'd assumed that it was more jabber-like in that anyone could start a server, rather than having to have one.
Re: Why Diaspora will fail
#7I happen to agree with most of the press about Diaspora being doomed to fail. According to phrases and ideas all of us throw around, it's doomed to fail.
If I were the Diaspora team, I'd print out every piece of negative press and post it up on the wall in front of me. Then I'd make a pot of coffee and get to coding, using my "bad press" wall as my motivation to beat the hell out of the naysayers with a fantastic product a few months down the road.
The number of stories where the underdog or unknown in the start-up world surprises everyone and creates something unbelievably successful is staggering. I guess that's why I can't help but root for them. The odds are stacked against them, for sure, but that kind of pressure has brought forth some world-rocking products, and it's not my place to declare something dead before it's even been born.
Re: Why Diaspora will fail
#8Someone really needs to start a nonprofit Facebook with the same basic design goals, a steering board, and probably some nominal monthly costs for accumulating more than 2GB of photos. Facebook solves the Internet anonymity problem, but it does so in a business-oriented way, which is gradually eroding the benefits of verified identity.
Only a non-profit with the stated mission of facilitating private and consensual friendship between existing, identified private individuals can really solve the problem.
Re: Why Diaspora will fail
#9Yeah there's no way a bunch of university students can compete with a big, established social networking site! Oh wait ...
I don't think the article argued that they can't compete because they're university students. It mentioned that this idea has been tried in the past and failed. Also that the average Joe won't want, likely even know how, to set up their own seed. People probably don't want to pay to host their own seed. Not mention you're going to go where your friends are. People aren't going to leave Facebook in droves because a couple of their nerdy friends left. Did you even read the article? Granted it's rather negative, but some of the points are valid.
Re: Why Diaspora will fail
#10Ugh, this post is irritating. Did you fund Disporia? No? then why do you care about its success? or its funding? or the buzzwords? or whatever?
Let them try before condemning them to failure.
"By the way, what have you done that’s so great? Do you... just criticize others work and belittle their motivations?"