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Diaspora Will Now Be A Community Project

blog.diasporafoundation.org

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Re: Diaspora Will Now Be A Community Project

#81

Post by saraid216 »

nostromo wrote: post #75
flatline3 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To take on Facebook they would have had to implement something that worked. They didn't, and couldn't, because they were way out of their depth. These were just recent graduates with almost no experience. The blame lies in small part on them, for setting naively optimistic expectations, but in large part on the mainstream media and technology media that trumpeted them, for validating those ridiculously optimistic exp…

Facebook itself was started by a "few extremely junior programmers."

Facebook was not taking on Facebook.

Re: Diaspora Will Now Be A Community Project

#82

Post by graue »

This stings a lot less after the announcement of Tent (http://tent.io, discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4418904), a project aimed at similar goals, but starting with a protocol, not an application. I think Tent, or something like it, is what those of us concerned with Facebook's monopoly power should keep our eyes on.

Why? Because it's just a protocol, so you can build a Facebook alternative on top of it, sure, but you can also build services equivalent to Twitter, Tumblr, LinkedIn, FourSquare, Instagram, Pinterest, Path, you name it, all interoperable. And the guys coming up with Tent don't have to be the ones who design the application layer. If they suck at UI/UX (which was questionable in the case of Diaspora), no problem, we can still build on their underlying tech.

Plus, it's not inherently noncommercial. With email you have three hosting options: free with ads, paid, and host it yourself. That's the best possible situation. On the one hand, companies are making money off ad-supported and paid email hosting, so they have incentives to provide the best service possible — unlike the non-profit "community pods" of Diaspora. On the other hand, you have interoperability and the freedom to use your data as you want — unlike on Facebook or Twitter, which will block you from exporting your contacts to a competing service. The Diaspora hosting model — where random people hosted servers for free just because they thought it was cool, or something — basically doesn't exist for email (or, say, web hosting), which is a good sign that it's unsustainable.

Diaspora was a flawed idea, but Tent, because it's a protocol, looks like a much more promising and realistic way to open social-media walled gardens.

Re: Diaspora Will Now Be A Community Project

#83

Post by noblethrasher »

nostromo wrote: post #75
flatline3 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To take on Facebook they would have had to implement something that worked. They didn't, and couldn't, because they were way out of their depth. These were just recent graduates with almost no experience. The blame lies in small part on them, for setting naively optimistic expectations, but in large part on the mainstream media and technology media that trumpeted them, for validating those ridiculously optimistic exp…

Facebook itself was started by a "few extremely junior programmers."

Zuckerberg was pretty far from "extremely junior" when he started facebook. He had already produced a product that had the interest of both AOL and Microsoft before he had even graduated highschool [1].

[1] https://www.google.com/#hl=en&sclient=psy-ab&q=synap...

Re: Diaspora Will Now Be A Community Project

#84

Post by imaginator »

18pfsmt wrote: post #65

XMPP seems to be a better protocol on which to base such a [higher -level] protocol. There are a couple projects following this path, but both seem to be a bit timid about trumpeting their own horns. I have nothing to do with either of them other than silently hoping they eventually win the day: 1) http://onesocialweb.org (Not sure about their future) 2) http://buddycloud.org (some of their contributors are HNers, bu…

(Simon from buddycloud here)

We've tried to take the approach that for everything you can use the REST-based JSON delivering API (https://github.com/buddycloud/buddycloud-http-api). The federation, domain discovery, message passing between domains, dial-back security etc are all handled at the XMPP layer and can essentially be a black box. Just know that your posts, media, whatever-you-want will get delivered when both domains are online and that servers will catch up on posts when one goes down.

To me this gives developers the best of both worlds - simple to develop web-app combined with solid, tested, it-just-works federation.

Re: Diaspora Will Now Be A Community Project

#85

Post by debacle »

graue wrote: post #82

This stings a lot less after the announcement of Tent ( http://tent.io , discussed at https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4418904 ), a project aimed at similar goals, but starting with a protocol, not an application. I think Tent, or something like it, is what those of us concerned with Facebook's monopoly power should keep our eyes on. Why? Because it's just a protocol, so you can build a Facebook alternative on to…

Tent looks promising, but the Internet wasn't based on "push."

Tent is just the initial iteration of a new, more open and more private social sphere.

Re: Diaspora Will Now Be A Community Project

#86

Post by shmerl »

001sky wrote: post #80
shmerl wrote: post #67

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, privacy is really required for something that aims to compete with Facebook, simply because Facebook can't compete on privacy.

Assuming this is true, how much is control rights vs need for de-novo architechture?

I'm not sure if I understood the question, but if you mean how user control is related to the decentralized structure, then the answer is in the question. Decentralization essentially prevents one entity from being in control, and in edge case control is given to a user who runs a personal pod for single Diaspora account.

Re: Diaspora Will Now Be A Community Project

#87

Post by taligent »

joe_the_user wrote: post #51
chimeracoder wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think most of the lessons are non-technical, which makes them all the more valuable. 1. Diaspora had all the characteristics of vaporware for the longest time - I remember they were #1 in a HuffPo 'Top Ten Alternatives to Facebook' lineup in May 2010[1]. 2. The source code released that fall seemed to fail Spolsky's second rule of being able to build in a single step, because I remember checking out the repo and th…

It seems like you're flagging the results of bad development. The question we need to ask ourselves is, what leads these to unfortunate results. The decision to use two-stage build process might not be bad when a project is in that kind of shape. What leads a project to get into that kind of shape? Well, that is the question. At the same time, I remember the first code-release of diaspora was before G+, it just wasn'…

Inexperience.

It was VERY clear that these were just a bunch of college kids who had no decent real world experience in software development. When you have a such a small project as Diaspora failing to get something the fundamentals sorted from day one is a bad sign IMHO.

Re: Diaspora Will Now Be A Community Project

#88

Post by trafficlight »

nostromo wrote: post #75
flatline3 wrote: post #63

Earlier quoted context omitted.

To take on Facebook they would have had to implement something that worked. They didn't, and couldn't, because they were way out of their depth. These were just recent graduates with almost no experience. The blame lies in small part on them, for setting naively optimistic expectations, but in large part on the mainstream media and technology media that trumpeted them, for validating those ridiculously optimistic exp…

Facebook itself was started by a "few extremely junior programmers."

What Facebook needed to be in 2004 is a far cry from what Diaspora needed to be in 2012.

Re: Diaspora Will Now Be A Community Project

#89

Post by flurpitude »

citricsquid wrote: post #20
andr wrote: post #2

I'm really interested in what percent of Kickstarter projects end up abandoned, like Diaspora just was? Are there any statistics?

Lots of them do and quite a few flounder in the "I'm working on it, sorry!" phase. I backed a project in early 2010 (A documentary) and the total raised was $15k, initial estimates were a few months. It's approaching 2 and a half years, the guy still updates monthly with "I'm editing this piece!" and "I did this" and sometimes he'll even include an excuse and apology! I said it last year and I'll say it again now, Ki…

Crowdsourced funding does have the advantage of spreading the risk among the crowd though. When I fund a Kickstarter project I know full well that these people might run off with the money or the project might fall flat, but I take the risk with a small amount of my own money - an amount I can afford to lose. I don't expect every project I fund, or even the majority of them, to succeed, but you pay to give them a chance, and you take on the risk knowingly. That seems to be the best way to see the deal.

Re: Diaspora Will Now Be A Community Project

#90

Post by gojomo »

shinratdr wrote: post #45
nostromo wrote: post #26

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When is the last time you took on Facebook and won? I applaud these guys -- at least they tried to improve the world in some way. I don't think HN should stigmatize failure.

> When is the last time you took on Facebook and won? How is launching yet another failed social network and executing it so poorly that it ends up immediately abandoned "taking on Facebook"? All they did was destroy what little confidence people had in the concept of a crowd-funded online service. That's not a positive, or something to be proud of. It actually sets everyone who is trying to do the same thing and exe…

It's not clear that people started with "little confidence" in the concept. If that were true, they'd not have been funded at all. Plenty of people had plenty of confidence, self-evidently.

It's also not clear that confidence in such a "concept of a crowd-funded online service", generally, was 'destroyed'. App.net just got funded for much more money. Other online services have also been funded since for less (such as Hypothes.is).

People might not fund such a young team as Diaspora at such an early stage again. The undiscriminating enthusiastic community now knows better what to look for -- it's learned a little the hard way, like any investor must.

Diaspora proved there was interest and tested a longshot idea. Their fundraising success inspired a lot of other Kickstarter campaigns. We all now know more. That's progress to be proud of even if they and their backers were over-optimistic and over-ambitious.

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