7 ms·

Diaspora breaks $100k and all of Kickstarter's records

96 points by adamhowell 16y ago

stuntmouse 16y ago
$100,383 @ 10:02 AM PST.
pclark 16y ago
I doubt this will hurt Facebook. I don't believe regular users on the whole care about privacy. Especially if you compare the value of Facebook (all my friends, photos, events, chat) vs privacy cost. One interesting implementation they could strive for is rather than expecting users to host their own server, ask them for an AWS key and use that - that way Amazon handles all billing, uptime, etc. Also the name blows, and they're self professed nerds - generally terrible at making a user experience for regular users.
adamhowell 16y ago
Source for "and all of Kickstarter's records" bit: http://twitter.com/waxpancake/status/13922920432 http://twitter.com/waxpancake/status/13922920432
DLarsen 16y ago
While I haven't followed this story all that closely, what makes people so confident that this particular project will have legs? From a quick glance at the description of their effort, I wonder whether this will really be viable. My mom doesn't use FB for any other reason than that it's the most convenient way to send messages and pictures to friends. For her to move to anything else, it has to be easier. Try explaining to your mother-in-law that she needs to install a node.
- Kilimanjaro 16y ago
  You don't have to "install" a node. You just use one provided by wordpress, posterous, tumblr, et al. If you are a geek, then you roll your own.
- jeebusroxors 16y ago
  I'm assuming this is the only "Facebook killer" that has been covered in the NYT? There has also been a bit of scrutiny of Facebook in the media. I also suspect people are donating to the money, or the publicity of the donations and not the actual project - if that makes any sense at all.
Emore 16y ago
I wouldn't give them a dime, at this point. They don't even have a proof of concept, and giving them more money than they ask for is certainly counter-productive.
bcardarella 16y ago
This is going to be the most overhyped and underwhelming web project ever. This entire group looks like they have vaporware written all over them.
- andreyf 16y ago
  Well, if nothing else, this is certainly proof of an innovative fundraising strategy. Why sell equity in your company when you can appeal to masses of tiny investors with a "battling evil" story? I don't think Facebook has anything to worry about from a product perspective, but from a PR perspective, this shows that a lot of people hate them enough to put money down.
  - natrius 16y ago
    This isn't trivially reproducible.
- javery 16y ago
  If I was a journalist I would start stalking them right now, it's going to make a great cover story or book in 12 months whichever way it goes.
- milod 16y ago
  Is anyone else mildly depressed by the inequality between money raised and reality here? It's great that these guys are raising money, I'm all for it. They should take what they can get. But, what about all the brilliant open source projects out there, that people are actually enjoying and using today, not sponsored by large organizations that accept donations from the community. I'm willing to bet that _none_ of them have raised even close to this much money. It saddens me that society is more willing to financially support a statement than something actually useful and real. Perhaps this turn of events was destined to happen eventually and these lucky guys hit the media jackpot. I still can't be happy about it.
  - pstinnett 16y ago
    Is that necessarily the case though? I'm hoping to see a lot more open source projects popping up on Kickstarter. While I'm not donating to Diaspora* (yet) I think I would be happy to donate to plenty of open source projects and Kickstarter seems to be a great platform for collecting those donations.
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Kilimanjaro 16y ago
To the naysayers, even if they don't deliver, this undoubtedly proves there is place for a facebook competitor. And lots of people with money to back it up. To facebook, you just jumped the shark. Perhaps you will never die, but your days are counted as king of the social web.
- bjplink 16y ago
  All this proves is that a bunch of nerds got caught up in an open source telethon and gave some money. I highly doubt anyone at Facebook gives a damn... especially if they've watched the "pitch" video in which these guys come off like a bunch of 18 year old goofballs.
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    Enough people are pledging different stuff besides just money to give them a serious amount of resources to use, all it takes is for one or two experienced systems architects from the big G, skype or some other project to hop on board and they're going to get a lot more legs. Diasporas biggest negative asset at this point is the egos of the founders, judging by their videos. But then again, who wasn't cocky at 18. They're by no means a contender right now in the eyes of the tech world, but if I were Zuckerberg I'd take notice of what happens when you fuck people over often enough and what kind of grass roots resistance can materialize out of thin air. There seems to be a limit to consumer patience when it comes to things like this and that makes me happy. All FB has to do to take the wind out of diaspora's sails is to announce they got the message and that they'll default all privacy settings to 'opt-in' from now on and apologize. I doubt that will happen though.
    - tptacek 16y ago
      This is the second time in this thread (which I am kicking myself for reading) that someone has intimated that Diaspora is just a couple of Google developers away from being big. No. If Facebook was 2, 10, or 100 top-caliber Google engineers away from a serious challenge, Google would already be seriously challenging Facebook. Google is a CS-hiring force of nature.
thaumaturgy 16y ago
Rats -- someone here said, "I'd be worried if I was kickstarter at this point...", and as I went to reply to that, they deleted their comment. But it's spot-on. Short term, this is going to bring a lot of publicity and attention towards kickstarter, and that will also benefit the projects on there. If you'd like to launch something via kickstarter, now is the time to do it. Because, odds are, what these guys roll out just isn't going to live up to the $100,000+ raised for it, and when that happens, that's going to reflect badly on kickstarter. I would guess that potential donors will be far more critical of future kickstarter projects; the foremost question on those projects is going to be, "Is this another Diaspora?" The funding for this thing stopped being about getting this project off the ground, and has started being about a protest against Facebook. There's more than enough money in there to launch Diaspora now. People are donating now just to moon Facebook, and that's gonna end up hurting kickstarter later.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  It isn't over until the fat lady sings. But if I were them I'd shut down the pledge site now, thank everyone and say that if after the launch they feel they need more funding they'll do a second round.
  - madmaze 16y ago
    hmm but the question is if they can shut it down while still keeping the money. maybe with this money they can expand their team and develop faster and better.
  - mrduncan 16y ago
    There really isn't any motivation to shut it down now though as far as I can tell. It seems like they're getting money with essentially no strings attached - might as well get it now while it's easy to get.
    - jacquesm 16y ago
      That's true. But they would come over a lot more credible (at least to me, that may be different for others). I you've misjudged your initial funding requirement by more than 10:1 you are already showing that you've done something wrong, so since they've received what they said they needed the logical next step would be to put up some proof they can deliver. Like that expectations stay within the realm of the feasible. On another note, this funding round is feeding off the facebook name recognition, not on the track record of these people. Everybody loves an underdog.
jacquesm 16y ago
If they keep this up they'll cross a million bucks in the next 18 days. I'd start to feel a little uncomfortable if I were them by now, $10K is fine, but a million is a serious responsibility, even if it was gathered as small change. The surprising thing to me is how many people pledge fairly large amounts.
- andymoe 16y ago
  100k will give them more time to work on this comfortably after the initial release. It's an ambitious project and 100k is still chump change - they should raise as much as possible now. Maybe they won't need to ever take VC funding later on.
- ErrantX 16y ago
  Agreed; 10K seems a reasonable "investment" to see if they can come up with the goods. 100K (or more) smacks of people jumping on the current "Down With Facebook" train and not considering what they are putting money into properly. They don't really need 100K - and if it ends up being all about the money it's never going to end well :(
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    Back of the envelope has this between $250K and 1.5 million if this keeps up. At this point I think the more money they raise the bigger the chance they'll fail to meet expectations.
- orblivion 16y ago
  I think that once the NYT article falls out of view, it'll slow down considerably.
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    Their current funding success will generate another round of publicity, that's already happening. Everybody loves to hate facebook so you can just about cue the next round of blog posts and press coverage. edit: it looks like that was on the money: http://news.google.com/news/search?q=diaspora+facebook http://news.google.com/news/search?q=diaspora+facebook
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TallGuyShort 16y ago
Related to the whole Facebook fiasco, I just found this. I wonder how credible it is - that information is hard to verify. Basically, Zuckerburg allegedly IM'd his friend, and called early Facebook adopters "dumb fks" for trusting him with their information. http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims-wont-help-facebooks-privacy-problems-2010-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims...
- jacquesm 16y ago
  If it's true one more reason to be very wary what you put in writng, even if it is just an IM message.
  - orblivion 16y ago
    Yeah what a dumb fk
joubert 16y ago
What programming experience do the Diaspora guys have?
- jacquesm 16y ago
  At their age? Not a whole lot. But then again, Zuckerberg was about that age when he built the first version of facebook. It's not rocketscience. The problem is, there is facebook now. And that sets the bar pretty high. Going up against the proverbial 800 pound gorilla makes for a great story but it will probably end in some squashed egos. The book rights will be worth something though :) Just like duck-duck-go isn't going to overtake google tomorrow though, they might find a niche they can exploit. Facebook exiles most likely.
  - andymoe 16y ago
    What they are proposing is significantly more difficult than what Facebook initially wrote. Facebook, at one point, was just another web app with a nice story for bootstrapping new users via the college networks. These guys are trying to build a distributed, secure, encrypted network on which to build social networking functionality. If they do it correctly it could be the basis for a whole lot more. And even if they don't work it out entirely as long as they release the source code it is a step in the right direction and others can continue to work on it or something similar.
    - jacquesm 16y ago
      Yes, but if they hire say cperciva or someone with credentials and experience like that I can see that part as 'solvable'. The technology is doable, after all, skype was built by two guys on top of a library created to distribute mp3s. If you look at the top of the pledge page they write "Decentralize the web", they do not specifically mention facebook, so they seem to be aware of the fact that this could be the basis for a whole lot more.
    - anigbrowl 16y ago
      Well, GPG is fairly mature, and so is the BitTorrent protocol, which Bram Cohen launched at ~25. they're ambitious to be sure, but the basic concept is not that far out. Anyway, they now have enough money to hire a competent programmer or two if they get stuck :)
andreyf 16y ago
This seems like a great opportunity for Google to "donate" some senior talent to the project, blow this up into a fully functioning platform (optionally backed up on Google's servers), and one-punch KO Facebook.
- hyperbovine 16y ago
  and one-punch KO Facebook Wha? A bunch of geeks living in the echo chamber are pissed about a privacy issue, so they all cruise over to a geeky website, and toss in $20 of their geek-inflated disposable income, to a vaporware project whose popularity is mostly due to politics. Meanwhile, in the time it took me to write this, ten million people logged in to Facebook. Methinks a little perspective is in order here.
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    Exactly. All this amounts to at this stage is a signal to facebook. A powerful signal, absolutely. But not by any stretch of the imagination a threat. If they deliver somewhere in the fall and if it starts to draw significant traffic and if they don't have a big security breach themselves, and if there is no falling out between the four founders then they might be a contender. But that's a lot of ifs.
    - rick_2047 16y ago
      I was just wondering is the 100k worth the powerful signal.
      - jacquesm 16y ago
        > I was just wondering is the 100k worth the powerful signal. Don't you mean the opposite?
        rick_2047 16y ago
        No I don't. Not many people care about there privacy (otherwise facebook would have been bust). And even if they had pledged 200% or 300% that would have been enough to send a strong signal but 1088% of pledging is just not right. There could have been so much more done with the other 80k. So many other things need money.
charlesdm 16y ago
They went from 10K to 100k, and they're probably going to end up with even more massive amount of money in the end. I'm really interested in seeing what they're going to deliver.
clistctrl 16y ago
They're starting to look at some serious cash. I hope these kids use it wisely. A reasonable amount should be used for living expenses, but there's enough left over to hire a good quality graphics designer, and other contractors to help with the load.
jgrahamc 16y ago
Colour me unimpressed. Show me the code!
UnknownSource 16y ago
I was personally going to donate to this project, but unfortunately, there seems to be little evidence that these guys actually are competent coders (not even code samples from their uni). So I fear that people are paying money simply because they hate Facebook, and that it may be mostly wasted. I'd love to see this happen, but I do feel that there is a high risk that the end product may be garbage. So I urge people who want to donate to learn more about the boys first (a computer science degree doesn't necessarily guarantee that they even know basics such as proper multithreading or have ever touched sockets).
MikeCapone 16y ago
Too much hype and money can be dangerous. It reminds me of Cuil...
khangtoh 16y ago
With 10K , we hope to see something, with 100K, we expect to see something, with 1M, we better damn well get something.
dfj225 16y ago
I'll be interested to see if, by the end of the summer, they have a working project and the turn-key hosting solution. If they get this working, it'll be interesting to see what the adoption rates are. There might be some people with cash interested in using software such as this, but it still doesn't seem to have a draw beyond those with a deep knowledge of tech. For instance, I'd wager that most Facebook users don't know what GPG is or care if it is being used or not.
Maro 16y ago
Success is all about incentives. In this case, by the end the kids probably end up with $100K-200K each. Perhaps the biggest incentive for them will be not to be those guys who got a jackload of money from donations and never delivered. Google remembers forever.
Maro 16y ago
One thing I'd require in this donation model that they provide an online "billing" statement that shows (at least roughly) what they spent the money on.
jasongullickson 16y ago
This has reinvigorated my interest in Kickstarter. I lost interest when I wasn't able to set a high enough goal (some sort of field validation bug) for my first attempt to post a project. Maybe I'll try something less ambitious this time around?
pkulak 16y ago
Have these guys updated their plans now to reflect the new funding?
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orblivion 16y ago
I'm all excited about this too, but does anybody even know these kids? Is anybody out there vouching for so much as their ability to program? 10k is a nice thing to risk at them, but 100k is pushing it in my opinion. 100k towards "a decentralized social network" sounds good, but 100k towards one particular decentralized social network sounds like trouble. At least it'll be open source so somebody else can take it and fix it if they screw up. On the other hand, perhaps this money is useful for the market signal in itself, that this sort of thing is in demand.
jonursenbach 16y ago
I can't help but wonder how much of the money raised for these guys is going to be spent on the rewards promised.
ashnyc 16y ago
I am happy they are getting this much money, but what is more interesting is to find out who is behind these guys. Who had the connection to the NYtimes, why did the story get picked up. They went from 0 to 3,000 followers in 1 day on twitter. http://twitter.com/joindiaspora http://twitter.com/joindiaspora I have done some analysis kickstarter fundraisers, and why some fundraisers go viral and others don't. here is a quick example, same subject but only one was able to raise money http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/search?term=obama http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/search?term=obama
rick_2047 16y ago
I have said it before[1] and I will say it again, this is obscene amount of money for something that not a thing that a very big portion of web is going to use and is not a profit generating startup. [1]http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1343399 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1343399
chegra 16y ago
I see a lot of people worry about if they fail. I think in the community there are a lot of people here to make it a success, and I think at this point that showing a little opportunism would be good right now. Identify ways you can help that can create a win-win for both you and diaspora. Don't say you miss the party for this one.
zach 16y ago
I'm entertaining myself with the notion that a great deal of this money is from Zuck himself, funneled in via small amounts in a fiendish Xanatos Gambit[1] to make the inevitable flameout more spectacular. 1 - http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/XanatosGambit http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/XanatosGambit
PhrosTT 16y ago
the upshot to all this publicity is they'll get some competent advisors since they're now over their head for college frosh. also they should probably take a year off and move somewhere other than NYC (unless proximity to help is worth the rent).
papachito 16y ago
Their github repositories are unimpressive to say the least http://github.com/danielgrippi http://github.com/danielgrippi http://github.com/rsofaer http://github.com/rsofaer http://github.com/maxwell http://github.com/maxwell Judging by their open source activities, they are not people I'd give $100k to. I've seen much more impressive repositories from students.
QNguyen 16y ago
So I'm wondering - should they keep this a summer project or just take a leave of absence from school and give this project their full attention? 100k is some serious seed money.
- SkyMarshal 16y ago
  Leave of absence I'd say. 3months may be enough to build the basic infrastructure before turning it over to the open source community, but the odds of Diaspora succeeding in the long run will be significantly better if its guided by the people who created and live it as long as possible. Thinking of Linux as the model.
- percept 16y ago
  I say full attention. When will they get an opportunity like this again?
mkramlich 16y ago
What I don't understand about Diaspora is why can't one guy just start hacking out his own "distributed Facebook" replacement today. No team needed (not at start.) No money needed. Use F/OS/OTS software, all the pieces are just laying there. Actually I wouldn't be surprised if there were already several people out there doing exactly this already, but without the PR splash made by Diaspora. Ok, maybe I've just answered my own question. It's only about the PR splash!
- neurotech1 16y ago
  The money requested ($10,000) was intended as a summer sipend. I doubt that a single programmer can write the code in 3 months, while paying the bills. In other words, $10,000 means they can work on this all summer without needing a job to support them.
loup-vaillant 16y ago
Do someone know why they chose the name "Diaspora"? As far as I know, this word is heavily connoted, and may needlessly hurt some feelings. Would a more neutral name be fitter? Also, could the name be changed at all, given the attention it already received?

96 points by adamhowell 16y ago

$100,383 @ 10:02 AM PST.

I doubt this will hurt Facebook. I don't believe regular users on the whole care about privacy. Especially if you compare the value of Facebook (all my friends, photos, events, chat) vs privacy cost. One interesting implementation they could strive for is rather than expecting users to host their own server, ask them for an AWS key and use that - that way Amazon handles all billing, uptime, etc. Also the name blows, and they're self professed nerds - generally terrible at making a user experience for regular users.

adamhowell 16y ago

Source for "and all of Kickstarter's records" bit: http://twitter.com/waxpancake/status/13922920432 http://twitter.com/waxpancake/status/13922920432

DLarsen 16y ago

While I haven't followed this story all that closely, what makes people so confident that this particular project will have legs? From a quick glance at the description of their effort, I wonder whether this will really be viable. My mom doesn't use FB for any other reason than that it's the most convenient way to send messages and pictures to friends. For her to move to anything else, it has to be easier. Try explaining to your mother-in-law that she needs to install a node.

Kilimanjaro 16y ago
You don't have to "install" a node. You just use one provided by wordpress, posterous, tumblr, et al. If you are a geek, then you roll your own.
jeebusroxors 16y ago
I'm assuming this is the only "Facebook killer" that has been covered in the NYT? There has also been a bit of scrutiny of Facebook in the media. I also suspect people are donating to the money, or the publicity of the donations and not the actual project - if that makes any sense at all.

Emore 16y ago

I wouldn't give them a dime, at this point. They don't even have a proof of concept, and giving them more money than they ask for is certainly counter-productive.

bcardarella 16y ago

This is going to be the most overhyped and underwhelming web project ever. This entire group looks like they have vaporware written all over them.

andreyf 16y ago
Well, if nothing else, this is certainly proof of an innovative fundraising strategy. Why sell equity in your company when you can appeal to masses of tiny investors with a "battling evil" story? I don't think Facebook has anything to worry about from a product perspective, but from a PR perspective, this shows that a lot of people hate them enough to put money down.
- natrius 16y ago
  This isn't trivially reproducible.
javery 16y ago
If I was a journalist I would start stalking them right now, it's going to make a great cover story or book in 12 months whichever way it goes.
milod 16y ago
Is anyone else mildly depressed by the inequality between money raised and reality here? It's great that these guys are raising money, I'm all for it. They should take what they can get. But, what about all the brilliant open source projects out there, that people are actually enjoying and using today, not sponsored by large organizations that accept donations from the community. I'm willing to bet that _none_ of them have raised even close to this much money. It saddens me that society is more willing to financially support a statement than something actually useful and real. Perhaps this turn of events was destined to happen eventually and these lucky guys hit the media jackpot. I still can't be happy about it.
- pstinnett 16y ago
  Is that necessarily the case though? I'm hoping to see a lot more open source projects popping up on Kickstarter. While I'm not donating to Diaspora* (yet) I think I would be happy to donate to plenty of open source projects and Kickstarter seems to be a great platform for collecting those donations.

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Kilimanjaro 16y ago

To the naysayers, even if they don't deliver, this undoubtedly proves there is place for a facebook competitor. And lots of people with money to back it up. To facebook, you just jumped the shark. Perhaps you will never die, but your days are counted as king of the social web.

bjplink 16y ago
All this proves is that a bunch of nerds got caught up in an open source telethon and gave some money. I highly doubt anyone at Facebook gives a damn... especially if they've watched the "pitch" video in which these guys come off like a bunch of 18 year old goofballs.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  Enough people are pledging different stuff besides just money to give them a serious amount of resources to use, all it takes is for one or two experienced systems architects from the big G, skype or some other project to hop on board and they're going to get a lot more legs. Diasporas biggest negative asset at this point is the egos of the founders, judging by their videos. But then again, who wasn't cocky at 18. They're by no means a contender right now in the eyes of the tech world, but if I were Zuckerberg I'd take notice of what happens when you fuck people over often enough and what kind of grass roots resistance can materialize out of thin air. There seems to be a limit to consumer patience when it comes to things like this and that makes me happy. All FB has to do to take the wind out of diaspora's sails is to announce they got the message and that they'll default all privacy settings to 'opt-in' from now on and apologize. I doubt that will happen though.
  - tptacek 16y ago
    This is the second time in this thread (which I am kicking myself for reading) that someone has intimated that Diaspora is just a couple of Google developers away from being big. No. If Facebook was 2, 10, or 100 top-caliber Google engineers away from a serious challenge, Google would already be seriously challenging Facebook. Google is a CS-hiring force of nature.

thaumaturgy 16y ago

Rats -- someone here said, "I'd be worried if I was kickstarter at this point...", and as I went to reply to that, they deleted their comment. But it's spot-on. Short term, this is going to bring a lot of publicity and attention towards kickstarter, and that will also benefit the projects on there. If you'd like to launch something via kickstarter, now is the time to do it. Because, odds are, what these guys roll out just isn't going to live up to the $100,000+ raised for it, and when that happens, that's going to reflect badly on kickstarter. I would guess that potential donors will be far more critical of future kickstarter projects; the foremost question on those projects is going to be, "Is this another Diaspora?" The funding for this thing stopped being about getting this project off the ground, and has started being about a protest against Facebook. There's more than enough money in there to launch Diaspora now. People are donating now just to moon Facebook, and that's gonna end up hurting kickstarter later.

jacquesm 16y ago
It isn't over until the fat lady sings. But if I were them I'd shut down the pledge site now, thank everyone and say that if after the launch they feel they need more funding they'll do a second round.
- madmaze 16y ago
  hmm but the question is if they can shut it down while still keeping the money. maybe with this money they can expand their team and develop faster and better.
- mrduncan 16y ago
  There really isn't any motivation to shut it down now though as far as I can tell. It seems like they're getting money with essentially no strings attached - might as well get it now while it's easy to get.
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    That's true. But they would come over a lot more credible (at least to me, that may be different for others). I you've misjudged your initial funding requirement by more than 10:1 you are already showing that you've done something wrong, so since they've received what they said they needed the logical next step would be to put up some proof they can deliver. Like that expectations stay within the realm of the feasible. On another note, this funding round is feeding off the facebook name recognition, not on the track record of these people. Everybody loves an underdog.

jacquesm 16y ago

If they keep this up they'll cross a million bucks in the next 18 days. I'd start to feel a little uncomfortable if I were them by now, $10K is fine, but a million is a serious responsibility, even if it was gathered as small change. The surprising thing to me is how many people pledge fairly large amounts.

andymoe 16y ago
100k will give them more time to work on this comfortably after the initial release. It's an ambitious project and 100k is still chump change - they should raise as much as possible now. Maybe they won't need to ever take VC funding later on.
ErrantX 16y ago
Agreed; 10K seems a reasonable "investment" to see if they can come up with the goods. 100K (or more) smacks of people jumping on the current "Down With Facebook" train and not considering what they are putting money into properly. They don't really need 100K - and if it ends up being all about the money it's never going to end well :(
- jacquesm 16y ago
  Back of the envelope has this between $250K and 1.5 million if this keeps up. At this point I think the more money they raise the bigger the chance they'll fail to meet expectations.
orblivion 16y ago
I think that once the NYT article falls out of view, it'll slow down considerably.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  Their current funding success will generate another round of publicity, that's already happening. Everybody loves to hate facebook so you can just about cue the next round of blog posts and press coverage. edit: it looks like that was on the money: http://news.google.com/news/search?q=diaspora+facebook http://news.google.com/news/search?q=diaspora+facebook

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TallGuyShort 16y ago

Related to the whole Facebook fiasco, I just found this. I wonder how credible it is - that information is hard to verify. Basically, Zuckerburg allegedly IM'd his friend, and called early Facebook adopters "dumb fks" for trusting him with their information. http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims-wont-help-facebooks-privacy-problems-2010-5 http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims...

jacquesm 16y ago
If it's true one more reason to be very wary what you put in writng, even if it is just an IM message.
- orblivion 16y ago
  Yeah what a dumb fk

joubert 16y ago

What programming experience do the Diaspora guys have?

jacquesm 16y ago
At their age? Not a whole lot. But then again, Zuckerberg was about that age when he built the first version of facebook. It's not rocketscience. The problem is, there is facebook now. And that sets the bar pretty high. Going up against the proverbial 800 pound gorilla makes for a great story but it will probably end in some squashed egos. The book rights will be worth something though :) Just like duck-duck-go isn't going to overtake google tomorrow though, they might find a niche they can exploit. Facebook exiles most likely.
- andymoe 16y ago
  What they are proposing is significantly more difficult than what Facebook initially wrote. Facebook, at one point, was just another web app with a nice story for bootstrapping new users via the college networks. These guys are trying to build a distributed, secure, encrypted network on which to build social networking functionality. If they do it correctly it could be the basis for a whole lot more. And even if they don't work it out entirely as long as they release the source code it is a step in the right direction and others can continue to work on it or something similar.
  - jacquesm 16y ago
    Yes, but if they hire say cperciva or someone with credentials and experience like that I can see that part as 'solvable'. The technology is doable, after all, skype was built by two guys on top of a library created to distribute mp3s. If you look at the top of the pledge page they write "Decentralize the web", they do not specifically mention facebook, so they seem to be aware of the fact that this could be the basis for a whole lot more.
  - anigbrowl 16y ago
    Well, GPG is fairly mature, and so is the BitTorrent protocol, which Bram Cohen launched at ~25. they're ambitious to be sure, but the basic concept is not that far out. Anyway, they now have enough money to hire a competent programmer or two if they get stuck :)

andreyf 16y ago

This seems like a great opportunity for Google to "donate" some senior talent to the project, blow this up into a fully functioning platform (optionally backed up on Google's servers), and one-punch KO Facebook.

hyperbovine 16y ago
and one-punch KO Facebook Wha? A bunch of geeks living in the echo chamber are pissed about a privacy issue, so they all cruise over to a geeky website, and toss in $20 of their geek-inflated disposable income, to a vaporware project whose popularity is mostly due to politics. Meanwhile, in the time it took me to write this, ten million people logged in to Facebook. Methinks a little perspective is in order here.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  Exactly. All this amounts to at this stage is a signal to facebook. A powerful signal, absolutely. But not by any stretch of the imagination a threat. If they deliver somewhere in the fall and if it starts to draw significant traffic and if they don't have a big security breach themselves, and if there is no falling out between the four founders then they might be a contender. But that's a lot of ifs.
  - rick_2047 16y ago
    I was just wondering is the 100k worth the powerful signal.
    - jacquesm 16y ago
      > I was just wondering is the 100k worth the powerful signal. Don't you mean the opposite?
      - rick_2047 16y ago
        No I don't. Not many people care about there privacy (otherwise facebook would have been bust). And even if they had pledged 200% or 300% that would have been enough to send a strong signal but 1088% of pledging is just not right. There could have been so much more done with the other 80k. So many other things need money.

charlesdm 16y ago

They went from 10K to 100k, and they're probably going to end up with even more massive amount of money in the end. I'm really interested in seeing what they're going to deliver.

clistctrl 16y ago

They're starting to look at some serious cash. I hope these kids use it wisely. A reasonable amount should be used for living expenses, but there's enough left over to hire a good quality graphics designer, and other contractors to help with the load.

jgrahamc 16y ago

Colour me unimpressed. Show me the code!

UnknownSource 16y ago

I was personally going to donate to this project, but unfortunately, there seems to be little evidence that these guys actually are competent coders (not even code samples from their uni). So I fear that people are paying money simply because they hate Facebook, and that it may be mostly wasted. I'd love to see this happen, but I do feel that there is a high risk that the end product may be garbage. So I urge people who want to donate to learn more about the boys first (a computer science degree doesn't necessarily guarantee that they even know basics such as proper multithreading or have ever touched sockets).

MikeCapone 16y ago

Too much hype and money can be dangerous. It reminds me of Cuil...

khangtoh 16y ago

With 10K , we hope to see something, with 100K, we expect to see something, with 1M, we better damn well get something.

dfj225 16y ago

I'll be interested to see if, by the end of the summer, they have a working project and the turn-key hosting solution. If they get this working, it'll be interesting to see what the adoption rates are. There might be some people with cash interested in using software such as this, but it still doesn't seem to have a draw beyond those with a deep knowledge of tech. For instance, I'd wager that most Facebook users don't know what GPG is or care if it is being used or not.

Maro 16y ago

Success is all about incentives. In this case, by the end the kids probably end up with $100K-200K each. Perhaps the biggest incentive for them will be not to be those guys who got a jackload of money from donations and never delivered. Google remembers forever.

Maro 16y ago

One thing I'd require in this donation model that they provide an online "billing" statement that shows (at least roughly) what they spent the money on.

jasongullickson 16y ago

This has reinvigorated my interest in Kickstarter. I lost interest when I wasn't able to set a high enough goal (some sort of field validation bug) for my first attempt to post a project. Maybe I'll try something less ambitious this time around?

pkulak 16y ago

Have these guys updated their plans now to reflect the new funding?

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orblivion 16y ago

I'm all excited about this too, but does anybody even know these kids? Is anybody out there vouching for so much as their ability to program? 10k is a nice thing to risk at them, but 100k is pushing it in my opinion. 100k towards "a decentralized social network" sounds good, but 100k towards one particular decentralized social network sounds like trouble. At least it'll be open source so somebody else can take it and fix it if they screw up. On the other hand, perhaps this money is useful for the market signal in itself, that this sort of thing is in demand.

jonursenbach 16y ago

I can't help but wonder how much of the money raised for these guys is going to be spent on the rewards promised.

ashnyc 16y ago

I am happy they are getting this much money, but what is more interesting is to find out who is behind these guys. Who had the connection to the NYtimes, why did the story get picked up. They went from 0 to 3,000 followers in 1 day on twitter. http://twitter.com/joindiaspora http://twitter.com/joindiaspora I have done some analysis kickstarter fundraisers, and why some fundraisers go viral and others don't. here is a quick example, same subject but only one was able to raise money http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/search?term=obama http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/search?term=obama

rick_2047 16y ago

I have said it before[1] and I will say it again, this is obscene amount of money for something that not a thing that a very big portion of web is going to use and is not a profit generating startup. [1]http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1343399 http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1343399

chegra 16y ago

I see a lot of people worry about if they fail. I think in the community there are a lot of people here to make it a success, and I think at this point that showing a little opportunism would be good right now. Identify ways you can help that can create a win-win for both you and diaspora. Don't say you miss the party for this one.

zach 16y ago

I'm entertaining myself with the notion that a great deal of this money is from Zuck himself, funneled in via small amounts in a fiendish Xanatos Gambit[1] to make the inevitable flameout more spectacular. 1 - http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/XanatosGambit http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/XanatosGambit

PhrosTT 16y ago

the upshot to all this publicity is they'll get some competent advisors since they're now over their head for college frosh. also they should probably take a year off and move somewhere other than NYC (unless proximity to help is worth the rent).

papachito 16y ago

Their github repositories are unimpressive to say the least http://github.com/danielgrippi http://github.com/danielgrippi http://github.com/rsofaer http://github.com/rsofaer http://github.com/maxwell http://github.com/maxwell Judging by their open source activities, they are not people I'd give $100k to. I've seen much more impressive repositories from students.

QNguyen 16y ago

So I'm wondering - should they keep this a summer project or just take a leave of absence from school and give this project their full attention? 100k is some serious seed money.

SkyMarshal 16y ago
Leave of absence I'd say. 3months may be enough to build the basic infrastructure before turning it over to the open source community, but the odds of Diaspora succeeding in the long run will be significantly better if its guided by the people who created and live it as long as possible. Thinking of Linux as the model.
percept 16y ago
I say full attention. When will they get an opportunity like this again?

mkramlich 16y ago

What I don't understand about Diaspora is why can't one guy just start hacking out his own "distributed Facebook" replacement today. No team needed (not at start.) No money needed. Use F/OS/OTS software, all the pieces are just laying there. Actually I wouldn't be surprised if there were already several people out there doing exactly this already, but without the PR splash made by Diaspora. Ok, maybe I've just answered my own question. It's only about the PR splash!

neurotech1 16y ago
The money requested ($10,000) was intended as a summer sipend. I doubt that a single programmer can write the code in 3 months, while paying the bills. In other words, $10,000 means they can work on this all summer without needing a job to support them.

loup-vaillant 16y ago

Do someone know why they chose the name "Diaspora"? As far as I know, this word is heavily connoted, and may needlessly hurt some feelings. Would a more neutral name be fitter? Also, could the name be changed at all, given the attention it already received?