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Diaspora's Curse - Jason Fried

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Re: Diaspora's Curse - Jason Fried

#71

Post by lionshare »

ubernostrum wrote: post #69

Diaspora's going to do one of two things. Option one, with approximately 98% probability, is "fail hard". A few geeks will run nodes and brag about it on places like HN, and that'll be it. Option two is that Diaspora succeeds, which will require some way around making everyone run their own node; basically, some company with the infrastructure to step in and host services for people, for cheap or preferably free. If…

1. Everything in this industry "starts with a few geeks". Including FB and that colorful logo company.

2. Let's do the math: FB valuation is 25B. 2% chances * 25B = Expectation of 500M. In these terms, a 250K kickapp funding is super-super-smart move :)

3. The question is not if Diaspora succeed but if the open source community can produce a distributed solution that will have non-geeky clients. It takes time, sure, but you have got to start somewhere (maybe the Flock social browser should team up as a non-geeky client?)

4. Hosting is no problem. It's like Wordpress hosting, it's done everywhere for cheap (and these are the bad news for J.Fried)

5. Google or FB? I prefer Goog.

Re: Diaspora's Curse - Jason Fried

#72

Post by swombat »

lionshare wrote: post #71
ubernostrum wrote: post #69

Diaspora's going to do one of two things. Option one, with approximately 98% probability, is "fail hard". A few geeks will run nodes and brag about it on places like HN, and that'll be it. Option two is that Diaspora succeeds, which will require some way around making everyone run their own node; basically, some company with the infrastructure to step in and host services for people, for cheap or preferably free. If…

1. Everything in this industry "starts with a few geeks". Including FB and that colorful logo company. 2. Let's do the math: FB valuation is 25B. 2% chances * 25B = Expectation of 500M. In these terms, a 250K kickapp funding is super-super-smart move :) 3. The question is not if Diaspora succeed but if the open source community can produce a distributed solution that will have non-geeky clients. It takes time, sure,…

Actually, iirc Facebook started with college students in Harvard and other US universities, not geeks.

Re: Diaspora's Curse - Jason Fried

#73

Post by ErrantX »

lionshare wrote: post #48
shadowsun7 wrote: post #40

> Expectations are too high Jason's third point is, I feel, the strongest. People aren't contributing to Diaspora because of Diaspora, they're contributing as an act against Facebook. The enemy of my enemy is my friend and all that. I'm not sure if that's a good thing. It's one thing to get in front of a movement and ride that to success. It's another to get in front of a movement that's predicated largely on hate. D…

nice comment from Fried blog (by Mark Pesce): "Jesus fscking Christ. What these kids need is a little support, not some idiot tearing them down because they suddenly find themselves in exactly the right place at exactly the right time with exactly the right idea. Jealous much? If you want to see Diaspora* succeed, then you’d better work very, very hard coming up with solutions to every one of the very real problems y…

Jesus fscking Christ. What these kids need is a little support, not some idiot tearing them down because they suddenly find themselves in exactly the right place at exactly the right time with exactly the right idea

Bullshit - what they need is tearing into now (just like this; politely) so they realise that they can't wing it on the good vibe. They gotta produce something good off this money; otherwise it's a potential disaster!

Call it a reality check.

Re: Diaspora's Curse - Jason Fried

#74

Post by lionshare »

swombat wrote: post #72
lionshare wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Everything in this industry "starts with a few geeks". Including FB and that colorful logo company. 2. Let's do the math: FB valuation is 25B. 2% chances * 25B = Expectation of 500M. In these terms, a 250K kickapp funding is super-super-smart move :) 3. The question is not if Diaspora succeed but if the open source community can produce a distributed solution that will have non-geeky clients. It takes time, sure,…

Actually, iirc Facebook started with college students in Harvard and other US universities, not geeks.

big diff

Re: Diaspora's Curse - Jason Fried

#75

Post by ErrantX »

My issue is this; Diaspora is two things;

- firstly it is a very complex sounding solution (which is great in a way - I love technically interesting ideas/research)

- secondly it's not a direct solution to the problem.

The issue, as I see it, is that Facebook have a stranglehold over the social net. The solution isn't about hosting our own content (that is clearly impractical for the majority of social users). The solution is about splitting the infrastructure between multiple providers - but in a way that allows a fully integrated experience for users.

That way the "industry" will be self regulating (because if a company looks bad people can migrate quickly away from it).

Re: Diaspora's Curse - Jason Fried

#76

Post by rue »

shadowsun7 wrote: post #40

> Expectations are too high Jason's third point is, I feel, the strongest. People aren't contributing to Diaspora because of Diaspora, they're contributing as an act against Facebook. The enemy of my enemy is my friend and all that. I'm not sure if that's a good thing. It's one thing to get in front of a movement and ride that to success. It's another to get in front of a movement that's predicated largely on hate. D…

> Jason's third point is, I feel, the strongest. People aren't contributing to Diaspora because of Diaspora, they're contributing as an act against Facebook.

For a hypothetical open project it might be good to distinguish between "contributing" (code/docs/whatever) and "donating" (money).

Re: Diaspora's Curse - Jason Fried

#77

Post by lionshare »

joubert wrote: post #70
shadowsun7 wrote: post #40

> Expectations are too high Jason's third point is, I feel, the strongest. People aren't contributing to Diaspora because of Diaspora, they're contributing as an act against Facebook. The enemy of my enemy is my friend and all that. I'm not sure if that's a good thing. It's one thing to get in front of a movement and ride that to success. It's another to get in front of a movement that's predicated largely on hate. D…

Perhaps the node thing is a question of economics. Instead of a company forking out millions and millions and needing to generate revenue through ads or subs, distributing the cost (running a node) thinly amongst users might make more sense economically. Not sure how they plan on convincing non-geeks to do this though (google native client perhaps?)

great point

Re: Diaspora's Curse - Jason Fried

#78

Post by al_james »

swombat wrote: post #72
lionshare wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

1. Everything in this industry "starts with a few geeks". Including FB and that colorful logo company. 2. Let's do the math: FB valuation is 25B. 2% chances * 25B = Expectation of 500M. In these terms, a 250K kickapp funding is super-super-smart move :) 3. The question is not if Diaspora succeed but if the open source community can produce a distributed solution that will have non-geeky clients. It takes time, sure,…

Actually, iirc Facebook started with college students in Harvard and other US universities, not geeks.

Yes huge difference. It still amazes me that some geeks have trouble identifying that they are not their own target market.

Re: Diaspora's Curse - Jason Fried

#79

Post by lionshare »

ErrantX wrote: post #73
lionshare wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

nice comment from Fried blog (by Mark Pesce): "Jesus fscking Christ. What these kids need is a little support, not some idiot tearing them down because they suddenly find themselves in exactly the right place at exactly the right time with exactly the right idea. Jealous much? If you want to see Diaspora* succeed, then you’d better work very, very hard coming up with solutions to every one of the very real problems y…

Jesus fscking Christ. What these kids need is a little support, not some idiot tearing them down because they suddenly find themselves in exactly the right place at exactly the right time with exactly the right idea Bullshit - what they need is tearing into now (just like this; politely) so they realise that they can't wing it on the good vibe. They gotta produce something good off this money; otherwise it's a potent…

fair, but let them finish the finance properly. This is not a reality check, it a move to stop the finance from a potential competing tool

Re: Diaspora's Curse - Jason Fried

#80

Post by mseebach »

ubernostrum wrote: post #69

Diaspora's going to do one of two things. Option one, with approximately 98% probability, is "fail hard". A few geeks will run nodes and brag about it on places like HN, and that'll be it. Option two is that Diaspora succeeds, which will require some way around making everyone run their own node; basically, some company with the infrastructure to step in and host services for people, for cheap or preferably free. If…

> What sort of company would do that, you ask? Why, the company which already has all the info Facebook doesn't know about you, and would love to get access to the info Facebook does. You know, that search engine with the colorful logo.

And that's fine. But because they'll commit to integrating into the open standard that Diaspora defines, at any given time, you can take your friends and leave.

If GMail (apps) starts messing with the privacy of my e-mail, or wants me to pay more than I want to, or changes the layout to something I don't find pleasing, instead of joining a group complaining, I can leave them in a heartbeat. The people I exchange emails with won't notice a bit. The promise of Diaspora is giving me that option for social networks.

There will be a GMail, there will be an Exchange server and there will be a buggy open-source self-hosted PHP-app (and many many more) in the Diaspora universe.

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