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Diaspora: One Month In

joindiaspora.com

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Re: Diaspora: One Month In

#81

Post by axod »

seancron wrote: post #80
axod wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

no evidence to show that facebook users see it that way, or care. Also FWIW, I think the name "diaspora" is terrible I cannot see it working at all.

The name can be changed, what I want is the technology. Show me the code and let me develop on it. Let me change the interface, add features, and do analysis on my social graph. Depending on the license they release the code under, there could potentially be other services that use the technology and have a nicer name than Diaspora. Facebook users might even take notice if Diaspora has a "dislike" button and access t…

The issue is, you'll get complete fragmentation and confusion. It won't get widespread adoption. It's a fun thing for geeks to play with, but I don't think there is any way in hell this can succeed with the current setup.

Re: Diaspora: One Month In

#82

Post by alexro »

axod wrote: post #81
seancron wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The name can be changed, what I want is the technology. Show me the code and let me develop on it. Let me change the interface, add features, and do analysis on my social graph. Depending on the license they release the code under, there could potentially be other services that use the technology and have a nicer name than Diaspora. Facebook users might even take notice if Diaspora has a "dislike" button and access t…

The issue is, you'll get complete fragmentation and confusion. It won't get widespread adoption. It's a fun thing for geeks to play with, but I don't think there is any way in hell this can succeed with the current setup.

Would you see a way to succeed for Google in 1999? Only geeks used it in the beginning

Re: Diaspora: One Month In

#83

Post by zaphar »

axod wrote: post #81
seancron wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The name can be changed, what I want is the technology. Show me the code and let me develop on it. Let me change the interface, add features, and do analysis on my social graph. Depending on the license they release the code under, there could potentially be other services that use the technology and have a nicer name than Diaspora. Facebook users might even take notice if Diaspora has a "dislike" button and access t…

The issue is, you'll get complete fragmentation and confusion. It won't get widespread adoption. It's a fun thing for geeks to play with, but I don't think there is any way in hell this can succeed with the current setup.

It doesn't have to get widespread adoption. It just has to be suitable for me to use. I don't use facebook hardly at all for posting content. I almost never log into it.

If this can pull from facebook eventually and perhaps even push to it then I'll be happy.

It's open source and open protocols. Because of that it's definition of success is not the same as a startups. Even if the project fails miserably but in the process causes Facebook to change a little then that will be a success IMO.

Re: Diaspora: One Month In

#84

Post by cmelbye »

Anyone else turn HD on and look at the URLs? http://washington.joindiaspora.com/ et al. I've been trying to create an account without luck, but they're running the app in the development environment so I've seen a lot of in depth back traces and things like that. They're using Rails 3 (beta 4), Thin and EventMachine's async features, Mongo/MongoMapper, Devise, and Warden.

Re: Diaspora: One Month In

#85

Post by axod »

zaphar wrote: post #83
axod wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is, you'll get complete fragmentation and confusion. It won't get widespread adoption. It's a fun thing for geeks to play with, but I don't think there is any way in hell this can succeed with the current setup.

It doesn't have to get widespread adoption. It just has to be suitable for me to use. I don't use facebook hardly at all for posting content. I almost never log into it. If this can pull from facebook eventually and perhaps even push to it then I'll be happy. It's open source and open protocols. Because of that it's definition of success is not the same as a startups. Even if the project fails miserably but in the pr…

What is the point of a social network if only you use it? ;)

Re: Diaspora: One Month In

#86

Post by zbrock »

jchonphoenix wrote: post #67
telemachos wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not quite sure what makes you say "the 4 founders...have very little technical knowledge and have outsourced the majority of their code." Here's what I read, After getting settled in ole San Fran, our first day at Pivotal Labs was June 7th. Not only has Pivotal lent us desks and monitors for the summer, they push us daily to drive development from the interface and focus on the experience, rather than providing j…

Pivotal Labs doesn't work for free. If you go to Pivotal's front page, what they do is pretty much do all the coding for a startup. They take a business person's ideas and then code them up and implement them. From there they then teach the business people either how to maintain it or how to hire a dev team that can (or work with the dev team they've hired to learn how to work with the codebase). Its just what pivota…

Nope, Pivotal is just providing space and mentoring.

Re: Diaspora: One Month In

#87

Post by axod »

alexro wrote: post #82
axod wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The issue is, you'll get complete fragmentation and confusion. It won't get widespread adoption. It's a fun thing for geeks to play with, but I don't think there is any way in hell this can succeed with the current setup.

Would you see a way to succeed for Google in 1999? Only geeks used it in the beginning

That's slightly different. Other search engines were poor. They focused on the wrong things, and didn't actually give good search results in the way users wanted.

Facebook actually solves most peoples needs very well for a social network / casual gaming platform.

Any competitor will have to work for a few years just to get the features that people will assume it has. Then comes the massive job of moving people from facebook.

Consider ebay. Ebay actually really sucks. It's terrible. Yet everyone still uses it for auctions. Why aren't there any auction startups? Because it's impossible to get people to move.

Re: Diaspora: One Month In

#88

Post by axod »

jacquesm wrote: post #34
jchonphoenix wrote: post #18

If 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…

Every startup has more reasons to fail than to succeed. That doesn't stop a few from succeeding though. Why is it worrisome that they outsource a part or even all of their code ? They came in to a boatload of money, maybe they're just using that to accelerate their development track.

> "Every startup has more reasons to fail than to succeed. That doesn't stop a few from succeeding though."

That's true for an average startup. But a facebook competitor??? Really? cmon. The odds of success are billions to one. It's probably similar to a startup gaining market share from eBay for auctions. The network effect is just too great.

Re: Diaspora: One Month In

#89

Post by seancron »

axod wrote: post #81
seancron wrote: post #80

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The name can be changed, what I want is the technology. Show me the code and let me develop on it. Let me change the interface, add features, and do analysis on my social graph. Depending on the license they release the code under, there could potentially be other services that use the technology and have a nicer name than Diaspora. Facebook users might even take notice if Diaspora has a "dislike" button and access t…

The issue is, you'll get complete fragmentation and confusion. It won't get widespread adoption. It's a fun thing for geeks to play with, but I don't think there is any way in hell this can succeed with the current setup.

It'll be fragmentation, yes, but hopefully it will be smart fragmentation, not chaos. The purpose of a distributed social network is for there not to be a single centralized server. They're not building a Facebook clone, they're building an open social network.

The way people use social networks right now is fragmented. People have accounts on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, etc. and they have to continually check those. What Diaspora potentially offers is a way to unify that communication, if you so choose.

Diaspora doesn't necessarily have to move people over from Facebook to their service completely. People may not need to leave any service at all. All Diaspora needs to do, is provide the same access to their social network, but with a little bit more control and extensibility.

There are currently 3,208,579 people on Facebook who want a dislike button. If Diaspora can provide that in the form of a dislike plugin, there's a lot of potential users. If Diaspora does not force any changes to their interface, but instead allows users to theme and customize them, then there are a few million more potential users.

As far as how long it will take before Diaspora has all of the features that Facebook has, I personally believe that it will take less time. The technology is more established than it was when Facebook first started, and they were still trying to figure out what would work, what wouldn't, and how they can make money.

In Diaspora's instance however, there are quite a few case studies (Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare) that they can look towards for inspiration. People are in general a bit more open, and engaged on social networks than they were when Facebook was founded (Facebook after all was first limited to college students only). Plus, there are the untold number of developers who would be willing to contribute towards the project when it is finally open sourced (just look at how many backers they got, and that was money, not code).

Phew, this comment turned into more of an essay, but I think it sums up my views, and hopes on Diaspora. Agree or disagree, thanks for reading at least :)

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