Diaspora may or may not succeed. The whole "node" concept turns me off, personally... I'm more interested in the idea that is could compete with Facebook at al

Diaspora may or may not succeed. The whole "node" concept turns me off, personally... I'm more interested in the idea that is could compete with Facebook at all. Facebook has become too big for a small startup to just step up and replace it. The reason I say this is that startups tend to follow the founders' vision, then get iterated based on customer feedback. But "replacing Facebook" isn't a solidified enough vision to act upon. The project team would need to first find out what "Facebook" means to the average user. Because, like it or not, the readers of HN are NOT the average FB user. There would need to be some dedicated research done to determine what feature set would even appeal to the masses. Once that is done, then we can talk solutions and build a team to make it happen. But trying to point at any extant project and say it is the replacement project... I just don't buy it.