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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

#91

Post by gojomo »

freshhawk wrote: post #42
rosser wrote: post #17

TL;DR, "After years, and hundreds of thousands of your dollars, we couldn't do it. Can you code it, too?" Don't mistake me; I'm a huge fan of what they were trying to do. I'm just really, deeply disappointed in their execution.

I was a huge fan until the first code release. Then the reality of how out of their depth they were hit me and I wrote it off. Did you actually try it out? I can't decide if I'm a fan of what they did because they just went for it and made a big splash or if I'm annoyed that they took all that kickstarter money for something they could never deliver with their skillset. No one else can crowdfund a similar project for…

No one else can crowdfund a similar project for a long time after this public meltdown.

Huh? App.net is similar in many dimensions and just got funded for way more.

Yes, people will be justifiably wary of a very-young team with very-lofty technical goals, without a demonstration of a better plan and code. But that's as it should be. They tested a longshot idea fairly efficiently; the market (of funders and adopters) has now learned a lessen at not much cost.

Re: Diaspora Will Now Be A Community Project

#92

Post by potatolicious »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #58
rosser wrote: post #17

TL;DR, "After years, and hundreds of thousands of your dollars, we couldn't do it. Can you code it, too?" Don't mistake me; I'm a huge fan of what they were trying to do. I'm just really, deeply disappointed in their execution.

And this is the single biggest weakness of the Kickstarter model. Ideas are 'easy', execution is 'hard.' That is why investors are very diligent in vetting the team behind the idea, since ultimately the best idea in the world is not worth the napkin it is drawn on, if the people responsible for it cannot realize it.

This isn't a weakness in crowdfunding, at least not intrinsically.

Validating the team has always been important, but the general mainstream internet doesn't realize that yet. They will, after at least one highly public meltdown where millions disappeared down a drain for little to none of the promised deliverables.

(I hate to be negative, and I want to be wrong, but my money right now is on the Ouya - unproven team out of their depth promising an extremely complex product delivered at unprecedented low cost and unprecedented fast schedule)

I suspect soon we will see a redirection in crowdfunding and more focus on the ability for funders to assess the competency of a team, and I suspect we will see more credibility-building on Kickstarter projects than we have seen thus far.

Re: Diaspora Will Now Be A Community Project

#93

Post by graue »

debacle wrote: post #85
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.

In fairness, what they have up right now is just the initial iteration of Tent. Basing Tent on PubSubHubbub (which is confusingly abbreviated as "PuSH") would address your criticism, and this has been suggested in an issue:

https://github.com/tent/tent.io/issues/7

Re: Diaspora Will Now Be A Community Project

#94

Post by ChuckMcM »

potatolicious wrote: post #92
ChuckMcM wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And this is the single biggest weakness of the Kickstarter model. Ideas are 'easy', execution is 'hard.' That is why investors are very diligent in vetting the team behind the idea, since ultimately the best idea in the world is not worth the napkin it is drawn on, if the people responsible for it cannot realize it.

This isn't a weakness in crowdfunding, at least not intrinsically. Validating the team has always been important, but the general mainstream internet doesn't realize that yet. They will, after at least one highly public meltdown where millions disappeared down a drain for little to none of the promised deliverables. (I hate to be negative, and I want to be wrong, but my money right now is on the Ouya - unproven team…

That is a better way of phrasing my concern. I'm wondering if there is a way to build a system along the lines of a web reputation type thing which could identify people who could execute well. I could imagine something like:

  This team has:
         delivered 3 kicstarters (a, b, c)
         failed to deliver 1 kickstarter (d)
Of course that information will get accumulated and used but I'm thinking of a formalized way of doing that like ebay seller feedback or something.

Re: Diaspora Will Now Be A Community Project

#95

Post by epscylonb »

chimeracoder wrote: post #33
egypturnash wrote: post #18

So if this is, as some comments are suggesting, an indication that Diaspora is essentially dead… what can we learn from it? What did they do right, what did they do wrong? Is "distributed social networks" a fundamentally flawed idea, or was their implementation flawed? I mean, they certainly did something right, given that G+ swiped liberally from Diaspora's design. (What would a distributed social network that was d…

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…

Someone said the other day in the submission about Tent, they should have published a protocol first. It should have been designed before they wrote any code, app.net at least seems to have this in it's favour.

Re: Diaspora Will Now Be A Community Project

#96

Post by state »

state wrote: post #14

This is pretty sad.

Sorry for not being clearer — it's probably a fair downvote, but I'm being totally honest and don't mean to disparage the work of the Diaspora team. I thought it was a great project and really hoped it would succeed. I don't fault them for their failure or think it comes unfairly. I think they gave it their all and it's sad that it didn't work out. Perhaps it will in the hands of the community.

Re: Diaspora Will Now Be A Community Project

#97

Post by OoTheNigerian »

LandoCalrissian wrote: post #22
OoTheNigerian wrote: post #16

For those up in arms about their 'abandonment' of Diaspora, I think they have toiled enough (2 years+) and deserve to move on. I doubt "own our lives" was part of the reward. I am even really amazed they could carry on even after one of them died. Looking forward to how Mark.io eventually turns out. Best of luck buddies!

I do find it a little funny that makr.io uses Facebook for it's login.

I have to agree with you. I doubt they were very passionate or/and experience to tackle what they did.

To be fair, it was a little bit of fun for 3 college kids looking to raise $10k that blew out of proportion. I am sure they tried too hard to live up to the expectations.

Their new side looks quite interesting although I have my reservations about the name.

Re: Diaspora Will Now Be A Community Project

#98

Post by 001sky »

shmerl wrote: post #86
001sky wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

About the notion that the data needs to be locally stored/controlled/at the edge. What about the idea of encryption and/or persistence management? (user control)

Does this provide more flexibility on Architecture.

Edited: for clarity.

Re: Diaspora Will Now Be A Community Project

#99

Post by thirdhaf »

rosser wrote: post #17

TL;DR, "After years, and hundreds of thousands of your dollars, we couldn't do it. Can you code it, too?" Don't mistake me; I'm a huge fan of what they were trying to do. I'm just really, deeply disappointed in their execution.

It seems like everyone is ignoring or has forgotten the death of Ilya, one of co-founders. Be as disappointed as you like but the psychological toll of this probably has more than a little bearing on the situation.

Re: Diaspora Will Now Be A Community Project

#100

Post by forgottenpaswrd »

ChuckMcM wrote: post #71
ajross wrote: post #66

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure I follow that. Is it a weakness of the model to fund "bad" projects from money that in the previous regime would never have gone to "good" projects? It's not from Kickstarter's point of view, obviously; they get paid. Ditto for the projects themselves. The members of the public who are "investing" are obviously accepting risk. And I think it's reasonable to argue that the per-dollar risk is higher for th…

Sorry, I wasn't clear. The challenge is that people who often invest (either as Angels or VCs or even large charity donations) learn through experience that the team that is going to execute the plan is the 'high order bit' or most important part of the equation. People who don't invest a lot, or are new at it, get caught up in the idea part of the pitch and imagine a world where that idea exists. Inexperienced inves…

"That creates an environment which is exceptionally prone to failure. That is why I think it is a weakness of the model, it doesn't surface the root causes of failure easily."

Why are you being so negative?. Kickstarters give normal people the capability to invest in -fund other people and that is amazing. People will make mistakes, but real investors make mistakes every single day. Venture Capital is called that way because they accept risk and most of the projects they invest in don't make it. They get by with those that do.

It seems like you prefer people not being able to spend their own money in order to "protect" them. Maybe you have personal interest in that.

I funded a lot of KS projects, some of them with over thousands dollars and I am extremely satisfied by ALL of them. With video you have so much information and clues about someone to know if she will comply.

The best way not to fail is not to try, but good things in life come from trusting people and risking too.

PS: It was clear from the start Diaspora was going to fail. Too abstract "pie in the sky", like someone telling you he is going to do a diet versus the same person giving clear message of how, when, where and what is going to eat in order to improve his life.

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