What really happened to Diaspora, the 'Facebook Killer?' It's complicated

I feel like the technical challenges involved in a distributed social network that the author mentions -- keeping profile views secret, for example -- could easily be overcome if the network were implemented over an encrypted layer such as TOR.

Wikipedia has a list of distributed social networking projects [1], many of which support such encryption. I suppose the problem then becomes one of adoption more than anything else. I could see the latency issues associated with encryption and anonymization being an issue in this respect. It's another Catch-22.

I suspect the only thing that can dethrone Facebook will be a significant event that will trigger a mass exodus.

Edit: After reading through the site a bit, it seems that Friendica [2] is indeed production ready. They definitely need some better marketing.

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_social_network

[2] http://friendica.com/