9 ms·

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 place

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 an existing company -- one which already offers services most people use -- were to do this and make it easy enough, they'd probably end up running a huge percentage of Diaspora. 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.

lionshare 17y ago
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.
- swombat 17y ago
  Actually, iirc Facebook started with college students in Harvard and other US universities, not geeks.
  - lionshare 17y ago
    big diff
  - al_james 17y ago
    Yes huge difference. It still amazes me that some geeks have trouble identifying that they are not their own target market.
    - bashnbash 17y ago
      yap, they clearly didn't get any support, feedback or momentum.
mseebach 17y ago
> 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.
- lionshare 17y ago
  Think Wordpress. Fried just doesn't want you to have that option for project management. It's not about Diasopora, it's about Basecamp.
  - mseebach 17y ago
    Well, wordpress.com isn't a player in the e-mail space, which was the analogy. And regarding Basecamp/Diaspora: I can already get most of the same functionality I can get from Basecamp in plenty of other products, both hosted and open-source. Basecamp is popular because it's really, really good, not by a long shot because they are the only option. A project management application on the Diaspora platform would have zero advantage over Basecamp because of that. And even if it would have, Diaspora is open, and 37S could just implement Basecamp as a node. Fried says Diaspora is going to fail because it's the provocative thing to do, and that's what Fried does on his blog.
    - lionshare 17y ago
      Than how do you explain his (successful) campaign against the free google chat that competes with Campfire? Google shut it down, basically, because it's "unfair to J.Fried". Since Google did it, nobody else dare to compete directly with Basecamp, as is. Diaspora is a paradigm shift, and it will be easier to implement a better Basecamp without single point of registration and billing.
plesn 17y ago
From what I heared here and there, one of their plans is try to "embed" Facebook, allowing people to view Facebook info or switch to "private" P2P mode when the other one has diaspora that. So it's not either/or. Concerning hosting, yeah there's google etc, but as they seem to have discussed with Elben Moglen, they will possibly also consider his ideas about self-hosting on small pluggable computers. And yeah, you probably already hava one: your DSL box. Some providers could play a a cool move on this one. edit: I don't know if they will have the time, but with encrypted replicated data and external data stores, many things are possible. E.g. you could host the most sensible personnal info and links on your box backed up somewhere and have your photos at Flickr.
- kree10 17y ago
  Right. I'm sure a large number Facebook's current users have devices on their networks that are more than capable of hosting an HTTP server (and maybe already do): the aforementioned DSL/cable modems, plus wireless routers, Roku boxes, video game consoles, etc. Also, why not just host on the home's PC? Look at what the botnets have done. No technical knowledge required, easy installation, automatic upgrades, and no maintenance for the "host" (double meaning intentional).
  - dmn001 17y ago
    Hosting on ones home PC is not an option. First, it needs it to be turned on 24/7, and limited upload speed of ADSL is a waste of bandwidth and would be impractical. Also you can look at logs and spy on what is being uploaded, unless there is an encrypted copy of all your files that are sharing. Hosting on google or similar, would defeat the point of a decentralisation. As more people join it, setup their nodes and share files, there may be redudant copies of data. It is just faster and cheaper to host it on a single big server. Normal users want to communicate, they do not care about installing software or anything more complicated than a simple web registration form. A feature I would like is to be able to export a copy of all the data I can see and use it offline e.g for backup. Currently Facebook does not have this option.
st3fan 17y ago
I think your logic is a little too binary. There is a huge range of other possibilities between a hard 'succeed' or 'fail'. That is how startups work.
wmf 17y ago
Google seems pretty attached to their advertising-subsidized business model; Diaspora hosting might be more likely to come from Amazon with a "consumer" version of EC2. Or Apple could decide to fight Facebook by adding Diaspora to MobileMe, but I think that's a long shot.

lionshare 17y ago

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.

swombat 17y ago
Actually, iirc Facebook started with college students in Harvard and other US universities, not geeks.
- lionshare 17y ago
  big diff
- al_james 17y ago
  Yes huge difference. It still amazes me that some geeks have trouble identifying that they are not their own target market.
  - bashnbash 17y ago
    yap, they clearly didn't get any support, feedback or momentum.

mseebach 17y ago

> 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.

lionshare 17y ago
Think Wordpress. Fried just doesn't want you to have that option for project management. It's not about Diasopora, it's about Basecamp.
- mseebach 17y ago
  Well, wordpress.com isn't a player in the e-mail space, which was the analogy. And regarding Basecamp/Diaspora: I can already get most of the same functionality I can get from Basecamp in plenty of other products, both hosted and open-source. Basecamp is popular because it's really, really good, not by a long shot because they are the only option. A project management application on the Diaspora platform would have zero advantage over Basecamp because of that. And even if it would have, Diaspora is open, and 37S could just implement Basecamp as a node. Fried says Diaspora is going to fail because it's the provocative thing to do, and that's what Fried does on his blog.
  - lionshare 17y ago
    Than how do you explain his (successful) campaign against the free google chat that competes with Campfire? Google shut it down, basically, because it's "unfair to J.Fried". Since Google did it, nobody else dare to compete directly with Basecamp, as is. Diaspora is a paradigm shift, and it will be easier to implement a better Basecamp without single point of registration and billing.

plesn 17y ago

From what I heared here and there, one of their plans is try to "embed" Facebook, allowing people to view Facebook info or switch to "private" P2P mode when the other one has diaspora that. So it's not either/or. Concerning hosting, yeah there's google etc, but as they seem to have discussed with Elben Moglen, they will possibly also consider his ideas about self-hosting on small pluggable computers. And yeah, you probably already hava one: your DSL box. Some providers could play a a cool move on this one. edit: I don't know if they will have the time, but with encrypted replicated data and external data stores, many things are possible. E.g. you could host the most sensible personnal info and links on your box backed up somewhere and have your photos at Flickr.

kree10 17y ago
Right. I'm sure a large number Facebook's current users have devices on their networks that are more than capable of hosting an HTTP server (and maybe already do): the aforementioned DSL/cable modems, plus wireless routers, Roku boxes, video game consoles, etc. Also, why not just host on the home's PC? Look at what the botnets have done. No technical knowledge required, easy installation, automatic upgrades, and no maintenance for the "host" (double meaning intentional).
- dmn001 17y ago
  Hosting on ones home PC is not an option. First, it needs it to be turned on 24/7, and limited upload speed of ADSL is a waste of bandwidth and would be impractical. Also you can look at logs and spy on what is being uploaded, unless there is an encrypted copy of all your files that are sharing. Hosting on google or similar, would defeat the point of a decentralisation. As more people join it, setup their nodes and share files, there may be redudant copies of data. It is just faster and cheaper to host it on a single big server. Normal users want to communicate, they do not care about installing software or anything more complicated than a simple web registration form. A feature I would like is to be able to export a copy of all the data I can see and use it offline e.g for backup. Currently Facebook does not have this option.

st3fan 17y ago

I think your logic is a little too binary. There is a huge range of other possibilities between a hard 'succeed' or 'fail'. That is how startups work.

wmf 17y ago

Google seems pretty attached to their advertising-subsidized business model; Diaspora hosting might be more likely to come from Amazon with a "consumer" version of EC2. Or Apple could decide to fight Facebook by adding Diaspora to MobileMe, but I think that's a long shot.