Happy to see them working with Pivotal, that gives me a lot more confidence in them. They're working with top notch mentors.
Diaspora: One Month In
11–20 of 89 posts
Re: Diaspora: One Month In
#12What just happened in the message passing demo?
Re: Diaspora: One Month In
#13Despite these guys' good intentions, I'd actually place my bet on an unfunded startup in this space over these guys who have been put through the hype cycle before they were ready.
Yes but remember how important the "seed users" are, which is why Facebook started where it did. If they truly deliver on the non-corporate, privacy aspects and keep a slim interface then many "alpha geeks" will swap over. Do you really care about the 100 or 200 friends you have on Facebook or the core 10-40? Or if all your tech buddies and most of your clued-in friends are on Diaspora and posting content there they don't post on Facebook, which account will you log into first? What will your Facebook become then other than a viewer, rather than a place that you put content? Would you have much trouble shutting down your Facebook at that point?
I don't see any unfunded startup being able to do anything new in this space, Facebook offered interface over Myspace. Diaspora offers control over Facebook - and from this demo they seem to be dispelling the vapour accusations, although we will have to see how it progresses. Google and Twitter currently are offering things and will be offering more in this space also. What real other avenues or general areas do you see a newcomer playing to? Games? Dating? Work collaboration? An even better interface? I don't see many areas for traction. Yes there is probably something I haven't thought of, but I don't think you can place your "bet" on a hypothetical vs these guys with an interesting demo and plenty of money to keep developing, who have hype and who are attacking the most vulnerable privacy/information vector in this market without some reasoning to back it up.
Edit/addendum: I also think these guys rubbed a lot of HN people the wrong way - although I am not accusing you of this necessarily - because they got decent crowd-sourced funding in a seemingly haphazard way. Yes they are young, but if you go back to their pitch it was very slick, and as I said above, this tech demo goes a fair way to dispel the concerns about their youth/inexperience.
Re: Diaspora: One Month In
#14What just happened in the message passing demo?
An offscreen computer on another seed posted some messages. They then propagated from one seed to the others and then websockets automagically sent the posts through to the users sitting at their browsers, which jammed them into the page as it received them (each of the six windows being a different user viewing their own seed and its feed.)
Re: Diaspora: One Month In
#15What I'd really like to know is: what are these guys doing with the 200 grand people pledged? Is it just paying their rent in SF or what?
If you look at the rewards the "backers" get[1], I bet they'll spend around half their money on buying and shipping all of that stuff. Possibly more if they pay someone to do fulfillment for them.
Also, the best way to waste their money is to say "well, people expect us to spend this money, let's find ways to spend it that sound useful." They shouldn't be afraid to spend it on worthwhile endeavors, but they also should be in no rush to spend it.
What do you really want them to spend it on? A few more developers might be good if they know good people, but wasting much time on hiring when they've just got a summer isn't worth it. (Btw, anyone know if they're returning to school in the fall?)
So they'll pay for their plane tickets, rent, and food. Hopefully they'll contract someone to help make the UI gorgeous unless one of them is really good at it (though it looks pretty good right now). And if they end the summer with $75k in the bank that they can use going forward, that's awesome.
[1]: right sidebar of http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/196017994/diaspora-the-p...
Re: Diaspora: One Month In
#16Despite these guys' good intentions, I'd actually place my bet on an unfunded startup in this space over these guys who have been put through the hype cycle before they were ready.
The so-called 'hype cycle' is the biggest contributor to social network's success, at least at the very early stage. People join social networks because other people are there, not because it guarantees more privacy, faster communications, or special features. An unfunded/unknown startup is more likely to lack traction and fade out quickly, no matter how good it is.
Re: Diaspora: One Month In
#17What I'd really like to know is: what are these guys doing with the 200 grand people pledged? Is it just paying their rent in SF or what?
What do you think they should spend it on? What did you think they would use it for?
Creating something like this - or most web startups - isn't expensive, it's just time consuming.
Re: Diaspora: One Month In
#18If you step back from the "hype", not to directly oppose the many views present on this board, and analyze their statements, it appears they have more reasons to fail than succeed. The most worrying thing I see is their reliance on pivotal labs. They mention it in passing, but it would appear that the 4 founders of diaspora have very little technical knowledge and have outsourced the majority of their code. They are relying on someone else to do the most fundamental part of their startup and that, in and of itself, is extremely worrisome.
Re: Diaspora: One Month In
#19Despite these guys' good intentions, I'd actually place my bet on an unfunded startup in this space over these guys who have been put through the hype cycle before they were ready.
Yes but remember how important the "seed users" are, which is why Facebook started where it did. If they truly deliver on the non-corporate, privacy aspects and keep a slim interface then many "alpha geeks" will swap over. Do you really care about the 100 or 200 friends you have on Facebook or the core 10-40? Or if all your tech buddies and most of your clued-in friends are on Diaspora and posting content there they…
Personally, I use facebook to communicate with friends and family - neither of which are universally geeks or techy. So I'd still use facebook.
Just because a few privacy freakouts and geeks flock to this I don't see any reason anyone else will yet.
Re: Diaspora: One Month In
#20Made me think about Web 3.0 possible definition - websites connected