13 ms·

Diaspora: One Month In

212 points by iwani 16y ago

stcredzero 16y ago
What I want to see: DRM for the people! Incorporate White Box Cryptography and the whole suite of tricks so that users can share certain info then unshare it. It wouldn't have to be perfect to be of tremendous benefit to many. (Girlfriend revenge sites won't be thrilled.)
- djacobs 16y ago
  What a fantastic idea. I'd never thought about the positive applications of DRM.
- mjgoins 16y ago
  Can you describe how you envision this working? Why would you choose to use a client that correctly implemented the drm features? How could a free/open source client even accomplish the drm?
  - stcredzero 16y ago
    I'd only implement this for completely closed platforms. All bets are off for hacked and jailbroken devices. The point isn't to provide absolute security. It's to provide an audit trail and some measure of security -- enough to foil an average consumer, but not enough to stand up to concerted attack. Why would you choose to use a client that correctly implemented the drm features? To avoid prosecution under the DMCA. To avoid having to jailbreak your device. Because the effort of hacking isn't worth it. Current streaming DRM technologies have a good-enough track record, in part because what they protect isn't that valuable. Big companies don't have access to perfect DRM, but it does useful things for them. Why shouldn't individuals have access to the same tools to protect their own data against such companies? In particular, big corporations are just as vulnerable to legal remedies as individuals.
andymoe 16y ago
I think it will be really interesting to see if they do the security correctly. If my entire network wants to remain anonymous to each other then that needs to be supported. If I want to create a separate public persona - I should be able to do that too. All communication between nodes should be really hard to intercept/fake and should be strongly encrypted, minimal logs should be stored and all content should be strongly encrypted on disk. I'm sure there are those here that could tell us what that might look like from an implementation standpoint and I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts. People are already comfortable with this mode of communication and we can make the world just a little better place if this new platform for communication was really secure by default and worked not only for the average internet user posting pictures of their cat but also the occasional government dissident organizing a protest.
tyrelb 16y ago
congrats on the success - good to hear you're on track, and I'm excited to try logging in! how can average people like me help out?
- rroy1590 16y ago
  patience. realistic expectations. encouragement.
c1sc0 16y ago
I actually like this refreshing new approach to writing open source software: keep it closed for several months & code like madmen. If they can get UX people involved in the closed stage we might even see an open source product with an elegant ui for once!
- muppetman 16y ago
  Totally agree. I think the "release often" philosophy is a good one, but too often and you just open yourself up to "this doesn't work, that's wrong, this is broken etc" I think knuckle down, code a bunch of good stuff then show it off. Of course you'll still get the complaints, but it'll be a lot clearer to a lot more people how it works and the potential it has. All that said, all they've shown us here is a very simple demo, we have no understanding of the underlying message passing protocol and its robustness. It does look promising, but looks of course...
  - igravious 16y ago
    Sure. But the mantra is "Release early, release often". And I guess early means that you don't need to wait until your code-base is feature complete or at 1.0 to release the code. By the same token I think you're allowed to do what the Diaspora guys are doing and lay the foundations first, set the tone of the project and the general direction and style. I hope these guys do well but if it ain't them it'll be someone else cuz peer to peer federated social networking is in the near future of social networking and I'd much much much prefer if it was open source than not.
    - muppetman 16y ago
      Yea, this is pretty much the comment I wish I'd posted.
  - dnaquin 16y ago
    Sorry to say but "this doesn't work, that's wrong, this is broken etc" is going to be said regardless of when you release and regardless of how many users you have. The number one rule of software engineering. Your code sucks.
ihodes 16y ago
Glad to see an update from them—sounds like they're doing work. They've got a lot more to do in the months ahead, and I'm looking forward to following along. As an aside, it's interesting to see how similar their message passing protocol is to one I'm beginning to plan out, though for a completely different application. Kinda like a "push to origin; fetch from origin" (from git). EDIT: And hmm, every time Diaspora comes up, people start to say something about a "hype cycle" or something. I don't really know what that is, but it's rather obnoxious. How about we don't take every mention of Diaspora as an invitation to count the ways they're sure to fail; because of the hypecycle or motorhyper or the gnarly-toothed funderrazer…etc. To me, this is an interesting update about a curious project. Keep it going!
- pvg 16y ago
  How can you tell it's obnoxious if you don't know what it means? Easy to find out, though - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle You might find it inaccurate or otherwise useless but it hardly seems obnoxious. As to assessing Diaspora's chances of success - it's a perfectly reasonable thing to do, especially in a forum of technology-, product- and business-focused people. It's Hacker News, not Cheerleader News, after all. Just because a reasoned analysis might be negative doesn't mean it's cynical.
qq66 16y ago
Despite these guys' good intentions, I'd actually place my bet on an unfunded startup in this space over these guys who have been put through the hype cycle before they were ready.
- drats 16y ago
  Yes but remember how important the "seed users" are, which is why Facebook started where it did. If they truly deliver on the non-corporate, privacy aspects and keep a slim interface then many "alpha geeks" will swap over. Do you really care about the 100 or 200 friends you have on Facebook or the core 10-40? Or if all your tech buddies and most of your clued-in friends are on Diaspora and posting content there they don't post on Facebook, which account will you log into first? What will your Facebook become then other than a viewer, rather than a place that you put content? Would you have much trouble shutting down your Facebook at that point? I don't see any unfunded startup being able to do anything new in this space, Facebook offered interface over Myspace. Diaspora offers control over Facebook - and from this demo they seem to be dispelling the vapour accusations, although we will have to see how it progresses. Google and Twitter currently are offering things and will be offering more in this space also. What real other avenues or general areas do you see a newcomer playing to? Games? Dating? Work collaboration? An even better interface? I don't see many areas for traction. Yes there is probably something I haven't thought of, but I don't think you can place your "bet" on a hypothetical vs these guys with an interesting demo and plenty of money to keep developing, who have hype and who are attacking the most vulnerable privacy/information vector in this market without some reasoning to back it up. Edit/addendum: I also think these guys rubbed a lot of HN people the wrong way - although I am not accusing you of this necessarily - because they got decent crowd-sourced funding in a seemingly haphazard way. Yes they are young, but if you go back to their pitch it was very slick, and as I said above, this tech demo goes a fair way to dispel the concerns about their youth/inexperience.
  - axod 16y ago
    Personally, I use facebook to communicate with friends and family - neither of which are universally geeks or techy. So I'd still use facebook. Just because a few privacy freakouts and geeks flock to this I don't see any reason anyone else will yet.
aditya 16y ago
What is the nature of their relationship with Pivotal? Anyone know?
- sant0sk1 16y ago
  It is most likely a client relationship. Pivotal is big on getting their clients into their office so they can participate in the XP process.
  - fizx 16y ago
    Probably not. They don't have enough money yet to afford Pivotal. This is probably just good PR for both sides, as well as relationship-building, so that when Diaspora gets an A round, they can start spending it at Pivotal.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
seldo 16y ago
What I'd really like to know is: what are these guys doing with the 200 grand people pledged? Is it just paying their rent in SF or what?
- jackowayed 16y ago
  If you look at the rewards the "backers" get[1], I bet they'll spend around half their money on buying and shipping all of that stuff. Possibly more if they pay someone to do fulfillment for them. Also, the best way to waste their money is to say "well, people expect us to spend this money, let's find ways to spend it that sound useful." They shouldn't be afraid to spend it on worthwhile endeavors, but they also should be in no rush to spend it. What do you really want them to spend it on? A few more developers might be good if they know good people, but wasting much time on hiring when they've just got a summer isn't worth it. (Btw, anyone know if they're returning to school in the fall?) So they'll pay for their plane tickets, rent, and food. Hopefully they'll contract someone to help make the UI gorgeous unless one of them is really good at it (though it looks pretty good right now). And if they end the summer with $75k in the bank that they can use going forward, that's awesome. [1]: right sidebar of http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/196017994/diaspora-the-personally-controlled-do-it-all-distr http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/196017994/diaspora-the-p...
  - bkrausz 16y ago
    It'll be a fair bit less than half, probably around $50k. Shameless but very relevant plug: http://nerdlife.net/diasporas-upfront-costs/ http://nerdlife.net/diasporas-upfront-costs/
- axod 16y ago
  What do you think they should spend it on? What did you think they would use it for? Creating something like this - or most web startups - isn't expensive, it's just time consuming.
  - BerislavLopac 16y ago
    "Creating something like this - or most web startups - isn't expensive, it's just time consuming." Which makes it expensive. Or is your time free?
shiftb 16y ago
Happy to see them working with Pivotal, that gives me a lot more confidence in them. They're working with top notch mentors.
kunjaan 16y ago
What just happened in the message passing demo?
- ohwaitnvm 16y ago
  An offscreen computer on another seed posted some messages. They then propagated from one seed to the others and then websockets automagically sent the posts through to the users sitting at their browsers, which jammed them into the page as it received them (each of the six windows being a different user viewing their own seed and its feed.)
jchonphoenix 16y ago
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 relying on someone else to do the most fundamental part of their startup and that, in and of itself, is extremely worrisome.
- jacquesm 16y ago
  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.
  - BerislavLopac 16y ago
    "Every startup has more reasons to fail than to succeed." That is true. But I'm curious -- is Diaspora a startup? I understand they're a bunch of students with a right attitude and a wrong idea, trying to give something to the community for the greater good -- have I got it wrong?
    - orborde 16y ago
      They're a startup in the sense that they're starting something new from scratch; they're a few people taking a risky voyage into the unknown in the hope of it paying off big (in this case, via social benefits).
  - axod 16y ago
    > "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.
alexro 16y ago
Made me think about Web 3.0 possible definition - websites connected
- weixiyen 16y ago
  web 2.0 - ajax web 3.0 - comet
  - manveru 16y ago
    Sorry, but they're the same.
    - weixiyen 16y ago
      No, they are related, but not the same, particularly on the server side.
- Raphael 16y ago
  3.0 was supposed to be semantic, atomized data.
aplari 16y ago
Is that asterisk part of their logo? It's really distracting. I spent a good few moments looking for a footnote, until it dawned on me that it was just a visual gimmick. So instead of hearing about their progress, I'm scanning their footer. I say change the logo, because it's first thing on every page. Thus an awesome distractor for whatever they want to tell.
- melvinram 16y ago
  What did you expect to find in a footnote for a logo/company name?
  - Kliment 16y ago
    Trademarks, disclaimers, parent company references. (X is a registered trademark of Y. Y and X are not affiliated with nor endorsed by similar-sounding Υ or Х. Y is a fully owned subsidiary of Z. All rights reserved. Blah Blah.)
pclark 16y ago
They're focussing on features, not benefits.
lhnz 16y ago
I don't think this will catch on. Diaspora is too hard for people to say... ;)
- robgough 16y ago
  I was surprised by the way the bloke in the video pronounced it actually, was thinking more dey-ah-spore-ah. I think there is an argument for a simpler name, but at this stage it's hardly the most important factor.
robryan 16y ago
What language are they using?
- telemachos 16y ago
  From the FAQ: What language are you programming Diaspora in? Ruby, with a bit of Rails and other Ruby frameworks thrown in.
garply 16y ago
So, if I'm reading this right, the servers will be totally distributed? I don't care about a Facebook replacement so much as a totally distributed file-sharing system where trust and recommendations are based on my real-life friends. It seems like that could happen with this. Also, I think file-sharing is a great hook for the everyday Joe. And it's somewhere Facebook can't easily go.
- messel 16y ago
  Couldn't agree more. The system they cook up will be one of many websocket wielding filesharing services. What will they do for browsers without websockets, flash supports sockets (cofounder Tyler hacked out a quick fallback). Maybe it's better to just not suppor older browsers?
  - djacobs 16y ago
    My guess is that people who are interested in Diaspora, at least at first, are current on their web browsers. I think there's a trend among web services (esp. Google) to prod even everyday people away from older browsers, especially IE6. Then again, if they want widespread adoption, they can't just support HTML5-compliant browsers. Hmm...
- oldgregg 16y ago
  Yes, a private dropbox/pirate bay among your trusted network of friends is 100% win. Easy to use and virtually invincible to RIAA claims. Heck, include a VLC browser plugin to make it all seemless.
- endergen 16y ago
  This was already done by Facebook and I assumed removed for liability reasons. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirehog http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirehog Though I do agree that the distributed nature provided you have encryption will make it very hard to catch people sharing files. Though if you stream the videos/images/books from your site to read/watch them you can get caught at that point(If ISPs complied with CopyRight enforcement strategies.)
joubert 16y ago
Im excited to try it out.
BerislavLopac 16y ago
One more thing I don't really understand -- what will Diaspora offer that other similar projects, already implemented don't already have? I'm talking the likes of Appleseed, PeerBook, PeerSoN, OneSocialWeb and Peerouette...
- ramy_d 16y ago
  honestly? I think it's hype and polish (then again, i've seen the other sites, and they aren't far away from good polish, so mostly hype). edit: i'm not trying to make a comment about hype cycles -_- or how they are going to fail. i'm just Diaspora is pretty much those projects, but with the attention and money they all deserved at a time when they were (are?) most active.
tmcw 16y ago
... so when you post a message, it's like sending 300-400 messages to up to 300-400 servers? Uh, yeah, that'll scale.
- qw 16y ago
  IRC servers can have lots of clients that receive messages, and they have no problems sending thousands of messages to connected clients. Diaspora's nodes seems to be both server and client, but the mechanics are the same. When it receives a message, it's just like a IRC client, and when it sends a message it is like an IRC server. Unless each physical server is overloaded with busy nodes, I think it will scale well. There is a limit to how many friends that subscribe to an average user. A possible improvement could be to have "repeater" nodes for popular users with tens of thousands of readers. Instead of sending 20.000 messages, you only send messages to 2-3 repeaters for example. The subscribers would be connected to the repeater node, and not the original node. I imagine that this could be controlled by setting a privacy level on your messages. Public messages would go to the repeaters, while private messages would be sent directly to your closest friends and family
  - wmf 16y ago
    OTOH, if you have 20,000 "friends" maybe Diaspora should force you to buy a more powerful server. Social networking is one thing and social marketing is another.
oomkiller 16y ago
It's disappointing to me to see them choose regular HTTP for communication. I think XMPP PubSub or just regular XMPP messages would work better, and you could use the existing federated jabber networks. With this, they are probably going to run into NAT traversal issues, etc.
- openfly 16y ago
  I actually spoke to these guys directly about this at a party. Only for a few minutes cause I am sure everyone and their mother wants to bike shed with them. But yeah, xmpp might have been the better choice. Google certainly thinks so. Protocol is all they have to get really right out of the gate.
- misuba 16y ago
  If it can't be hosted on the crappiest major shared host provider you could name, it isn't a fit for their goals. Which means it's a total mystery why they're using WebSocket, but yeah.
fizx 16y ago
An interesting note is that Pivotal Lab's VP of Technology, Ian McFarland (@imf), was Friendster's Chief Architect. Ian is one of the nicest people in the SF startup scene, and can share the experience of Friendster's growth, pain, and subsequent downfall.
paulnelligan 16y ago
Looks interesting. I really hope they try to change it up completely from 'the facebook model', while still including essential features - personally I'd like to see more emphasis on the virality (yes, virality!) of groups. These guys seem pretty smart, energetic, and optimistic. Anything that breaks the status quo is good. However, they could have used some screen capture for the demo ... It wasn't entirely clear to me what was going on there.
khangtoh 16y ago
It looks more like a Twitter replacement rather than a Facebook.
cmelbye 16y ago
Anyone else turn HD on and look at the URLs? http://washington.joindiaspora.com/ 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.

212 points by iwani 16y ago

What I want to see: DRM for the people! Incorporate White Box Cryptography and the whole suite of tricks so that users can share certain info then unshare it. It wouldn't have to be perfect to be of tremendous benefit to many. (Girlfriend revenge sites won't be thrilled.)

djacobs 16y ago
What a fantastic idea. I'd never thought about the positive applications of DRM.
mjgoins 16y ago
Can you describe how you envision this working? Why would you choose to use a client that correctly implemented the drm features? How could a free/open source client even accomplish the drm?
- stcredzero 16y ago
  I'd only implement this for completely closed platforms. All bets are off for hacked and jailbroken devices. The point isn't to provide absolute security. It's to provide an audit trail and some measure of security -- enough to foil an average consumer, but not enough to stand up to concerted attack. Why would you choose to use a client that correctly implemented the drm features? To avoid prosecution under the DMCA. To avoid having to jailbreak your device. Because the effort of hacking isn't worth it. Current streaming DRM technologies have a good-enough track record, in part because what they protect isn't that valuable. Big companies don't have access to perfect DRM, but it does useful things for them. Why shouldn't individuals have access to the same tools to protect their own data against such companies? In particular, big corporations are just as vulnerable to legal remedies as individuals.

andymoe 16y ago

I think it will be really interesting to see if they do the security correctly. If my entire network wants to remain anonymous to each other then that needs to be supported. If I want to create a separate public persona - I should be able to do that too. All communication between nodes should be really hard to intercept/fake and should be strongly encrypted, minimal logs should be stored and all content should be strongly encrypted on disk. I'm sure there are those here that could tell us what that might look like from an implementation standpoint and I'd love to hear everyone's thoughts. People are already comfortable with this mode of communication and we can make the world just a little better place if this new platform for communication was really secure by default and worked not only for the average internet user posting pictures of their cat but also the occasional government dissident organizing a protest.

tyrelb 16y ago

congrats on the success - good to hear you're on track, and I'm excited to try logging in! how can average people like me help out?

rroy1590 16y ago
patience. realistic expectations. encouragement.

c1sc0 16y ago

I actually like this refreshing new approach to writing open source software: keep it closed for several months & code like madmen. If they can get UX people involved in the closed stage we might even see an open source product with an elegant ui for once!

muppetman 16y ago
Totally agree. I think the "release often" philosophy is a good one, but too often and you just open yourself up to "this doesn't work, that's wrong, this is broken etc" I think knuckle down, code a bunch of good stuff then show it off. Of course you'll still get the complaints, but it'll be a lot clearer to a lot more people how it works and the potential it has. All that said, all they've shown us here is a very simple demo, we have no understanding of the underlying message passing protocol and its robustness. It does look promising, but looks of course...
- igravious 16y ago
  Sure. But the mantra is "Release early, release often". And I guess early means that you don't need to wait until your code-base is feature complete or at 1.0 to release the code. By the same token I think you're allowed to do what the Diaspora guys are doing and lay the foundations first, set the tone of the project and the general direction and style. I hope these guys do well but if it ain't them it'll be someone else cuz peer to peer federated social networking is in the near future of social networking and I'd much much much prefer if it was open source than not.
  - muppetman 16y ago
    Yea, this is pretty much the comment I wish I'd posted.
- dnaquin 16y ago
  Sorry to say but "this doesn't work, that's wrong, this is broken etc" is going to be said regardless of when you release and regardless of how many users you have. The number one rule of software engineering. Your code sucks.

ihodes 16y ago

Glad to see an update from them—sounds like they're doing work. They've got a lot more to do in the months ahead, and I'm looking forward to following along. As an aside, it's interesting to see how similar their message passing protocol is to one I'm beginning to plan out, though for a completely different application. Kinda like a "push to origin; fetch from origin" (from git). EDIT: And hmm, every time Diaspora comes up, people start to say something about a "hype cycle" or something. I don't really know what that is, but it's rather obnoxious. How about we don't take every mention of Diaspora as an invitation to count the ways they're sure to fail; because of the hypecycle or motorhyper or the gnarly-toothed funderrazer…etc. To me, this is an interesting update about a curious project. Keep it going!

pvg 16y ago
How can you tell it's obnoxious if you don't know what it means? Easy to find out, though - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hype_cycle You might find it inaccurate or otherwise useless but it hardly seems obnoxious. As to assessing Diaspora's chances of success - it's a perfectly reasonable thing to do, especially in a forum of technology-, product- and business-focused people. It's Hacker News, not Cheerleader News, after all. Just because a reasoned analysis might be negative doesn't mean it's cynical.

qq66 16y ago

Despite these guys' good intentions, I'd actually place my bet on an unfunded startup in this space over these guys who have been put through the hype cycle before they were ready.

drats 16y ago
Yes but remember how important the "seed users" are, which is why Facebook started where it did. If they truly deliver on the non-corporate, privacy aspects and keep a slim interface then many "alpha geeks" will swap over. Do you really care about the 100 or 200 friends you have on Facebook or the core 10-40? Or if all your tech buddies and most of your clued-in friends are on Diaspora and posting content there they don't post on Facebook, which account will you log into first? What will your Facebook become then other than a viewer, rather than a place that you put content? Would you have much trouble shutting down your Facebook at that point? I don't see any unfunded startup being able to do anything new in this space, Facebook offered interface over Myspace. Diaspora offers control over Facebook - and from this demo they seem to be dispelling the vapour accusations, although we will have to see how it progresses. Google and Twitter currently are offering things and will be offering more in this space also. What real other avenues or general areas do you see a newcomer playing to? Games? Dating? Work collaboration? An even better interface? I don't see many areas for traction. Yes there is probably something I haven't thought of, but I don't think you can place your "bet" on a hypothetical vs these guys with an interesting demo and plenty of money to keep developing, who have hype and who are attacking the most vulnerable privacy/information vector in this market without some reasoning to back it up. Edit/addendum: I also think these guys rubbed a lot of HN people the wrong way - although I am not accusing you of this necessarily - because they got decent crowd-sourced funding in a seemingly haphazard way. Yes they are young, but if you go back to their pitch it was very slick, and as I said above, this tech demo goes a fair way to dispel the concerns about their youth/inexperience.
- axod 16y ago
  Personally, I use facebook to communicate with friends and family - neither of which are universally geeks or techy. So I'd still use facebook. Just because a few privacy freakouts and geeks flock to this I don't see any reason anyone else will yet.

aditya 16y ago

What is the nature of their relationship with Pivotal? Anyone know?

sant0sk1 16y ago
It is most likely a client relationship. Pivotal is big on getting their clients into their office so they can participate in the XP process.
- fizx 16y ago
  Probably not. They don't have enough money yet to afford Pivotal. This is probably just good PR for both sides, as well as relationship-building, so that when Diaspora gets an A round, they can start spending it at Pivotal.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

seldo 16y ago

What I'd really like to know is: what are these guys doing with the 200 grand people pledged? Is it just paying their rent in SF or what?

jackowayed 16y ago
If you look at the rewards the "backers" get[1], I bet they'll spend around half their money on buying and shipping all of that stuff. Possibly more if they pay someone to do fulfillment for them. Also, the best way to waste their money is to say "well, people expect us to spend this money, let's find ways to spend it that sound useful." They shouldn't be afraid to spend it on worthwhile endeavors, but they also should be in no rush to spend it. What do you really want them to spend it on? A few more developers might be good if they know good people, but wasting much time on hiring when they've just got a summer isn't worth it. (Btw, anyone know if they're returning to school in the fall?) So they'll pay for their plane tickets, rent, and food. Hopefully they'll contract someone to help make the UI gorgeous unless one of them is really good at it (though it looks pretty good right now). And if they end the summer with $75k in the bank that they can use going forward, that's awesome. [1]: right sidebar of http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/196017994/diaspora-the-personally-controlled-do-it-all-distr http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/196017994/diaspora-the-p...
- bkrausz 16y ago
  It'll be a fair bit less than half, probably around $50k. Shameless but very relevant plug: http://nerdlife.net/diasporas-upfront-costs/ http://nerdlife.net/diasporas-upfront-costs/
axod 16y ago
What do you think they should spend it on? What did you think they would use it for? Creating something like this - or most web startups - isn't expensive, it's just time consuming.
- BerislavLopac 16y ago
  "Creating something like this - or most web startups - isn't expensive, it's just time consuming." Which makes it expensive. Or is your time free?

shiftb 16y ago

Happy to see them working with Pivotal, that gives me a lot more confidence in them. They're working with top notch mentors.

kunjaan 16y ago

What just happened in the message passing demo?

ohwaitnvm 16y ago
An offscreen computer on another seed posted some messages. They then propagated from one seed to the others and then websockets automagically sent the posts through to the users sitting at their browsers, which jammed them into the page as it received them (each of the six windows being a different user viewing their own seed and its feed.)

jchonphoenix 16y ago

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 relying on someone else to do the most fundamental part of their startup and that, in and of itself, is extremely worrisome.

jacquesm 16y ago
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.
- BerislavLopac 16y ago
  "Every startup has more reasons to fail than to succeed." That is true. But I'm curious -- is Diaspora a startup? I understand they're a bunch of students with a right attitude and a wrong idea, trying to give something to the community for the greater good -- have I got it wrong?
  - orborde 16y ago
    They're a startup in the sense that they're starting something new from scratch; they're a few people taking a risky voyage into the unknown in the hope of it paying off big (in this case, via social benefits).
- axod 16y ago
  > "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.

alexro 16y ago

Made me think about Web 3.0 possible definition - websites connected

weixiyen 16y ago
web 2.0 - ajax web 3.0 - comet
- manveru 16y ago
  Sorry, but they're the same.
  - weixiyen 16y ago
    No, they are related, but not the same, particularly on the server side.
Raphael 16y ago
3.0 was supposed to be semantic, atomized data.

aplari 16y ago

Is that asterisk part of their logo? It's really distracting. I spent a good few moments looking for a footnote, until it dawned on me that it was just a visual gimmick. So instead of hearing about their progress, I'm scanning their footer. I say change the logo, because it's first thing on every page. Thus an awesome distractor for whatever they want to tell.

melvinram 16y ago
What did you expect to find in a footnote for a logo/company name?
- Kliment 16y ago
  Trademarks, disclaimers, parent company references. (X is a registered trademark of Y. Y and X are not affiliated with nor endorsed by similar-sounding Υ or Х. Y is a fully owned subsidiary of Z. All rights reserved. Blah Blah.)

pclark 16y ago

They're focussing on features, not benefits.

lhnz 16y ago

I don't think this will catch on. Diaspora is too hard for people to say... ;)

robgough 16y ago
I was surprised by the way the bloke in the video pronounced it actually, was thinking more dey-ah-spore-ah. I think there is an argument for a simpler name, but at this stage it's hardly the most important factor.

robryan 16y ago

What language are they using?

telemachos 16y ago
From the FAQ: What language are you programming Diaspora in? Ruby, with a bit of Rails and other Ruby frameworks thrown in.

garply 16y ago

So, if I'm reading this right, the servers will be totally distributed? I don't care about a Facebook replacement so much as a totally distributed file-sharing system where trust and recommendations are based on my real-life friends. It seems like that could happen with this. Also, I think file-sharing is a great hook for the everyday Joe. And it's somewhere Facebook can't easily go.

messel 16y ago
Couldn't agree more. The system they cook up will be one of many websocket wielding filesharing services. What will they do for browsers without websockets, flash supports sockets (cofounder Tyler hacked out a quick fallback). Maybe it's better to just not suppor older browsers?
- djacobs 16y ago
  My guess is that people who are interested in Diaspora, at least at first, are current on their web browsers. I think there's a trend among web services (esp. Google) to prod even everyday people away from older browsers, especially IE6. Then again, if they want widespread adoption, they can't just support HTML5-compliant browsers. Hmm...
oldgregg 16y ago
Yes, a private dropbox/pirate bay among your trusted network of friends is 100% win. Easy to use and virtually invincible to RIAA claims. Heck, include a VLC browser plugin to make it all seemless.
endergen 16y ago
This was already done by Facebook and I assumed removed for liability reasons. See: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirehog http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirehog Though I do agree that the distributed nature provided you have encryption will make it very hard to catch people sharing files. Though if you stream the videos/images/books from your site to read/watch them you can get caught at that point(If ISPs complied with CopyRight enforcement strategies.)

joubert 16y ago

Im excited to try it out.

BerislavLopac 16y ago

One more thing I don't really understand -- what will Diaspora offer that other similar projects, already implemented don't already have? I'm talking the likes of Appleseed, PeerBook, PeerSoN, OneSocialWeb and Peerouette...

ramy_d 16y ago
honestly? I think it's hype and polish (then again, i've seen the other sites, and they aren't far away from good polish, so mostly hype). edit: i'm not trying to make a comment about hype cycles -_- or how they are going to fail. i'm just Diaspora is pretty much those projects, but with the attention and money they all deserved at a time when they were (are?) most active.

tmcw 16y ago

... so when you post a message, it's like sending 300-400 messages to up to 300-400 servers? Uh, yeah, that'll scale.

qw 16y ago
IRC servers can have lots of clients that receive messages, and they have no problems sending thousands of messages to connected clients. Diaspora's nodes seems to be both server and client, but the mechanics are the same. When it receives a message, it's just like a IRC client, and when it sends a message it is like an IRC server. Unless each physical server is overloaded with busy nodes, I think it will scale well. There is a limit to how many friends that subscribe to an average user. A possible improvement could be to have "repeater" nodes for popular users with tens of thousands of readers. Instead of sending 20.000 messages, you only send messages to 2-3 repeaters for example. The subscribers would be connected to the repeater node, and not the original node. I imagine that this could be controlled by setting a privacy level on your messages. Public messages would go to the repeaters, while private messages would be sent directly to your closest friends and family
- wmf 16y ago
  OTOH, if you have 20,000 "friends" maybe Diaspora should force you to buy a more powerful server. Social networking is one thing and social marketing is another.

oomkiller 16y ago

It's disappointing to me to see them choose regular HTTP for communication. I think XMPP PubSub or just regular XMPP messages would work better, and you could use the existing federated jabber networks. With this, they are probably going to run into NAT traversal issues, etc.

openfly 16y ago
I actually spoke to these guys directly about this at a party. Only for a few minutes cause I am sure everyone and their mother wants to bike shed with them. But yeah, xmpp might have been the better choice. Google certainly thinks so. Protocol is all they have to get really right out of the gate.
misuba 16y ago
If it can't be hosted on the crappiest major shared host provider you could name, it isn't a fit for their goals. Which means it's a total mystery why they're using WebSocket, but yeah.

fizx 16y ago

An interesting note is that Pivotal Lab's VP of Technology, Ian McFarland (@imf), was Friendster's Chief Architect. Ian is one of the nicest people in the SF startup scene, and can share the experience of Friendster's growth, pain, and subsequent downfall.

paulnelligan 16y ago

Looks interesting. I really hope they try to change it up completely from 'the facebook model', while still including essential features - personally I'd like to see more emphasis on the virality (yes, virality!) of groups. These guys seem pretty smart, energetic, and optimistic. Anything that breaks the status quo is good. However, they could have used some screen capture for the demo ... It wasn't entirely clear to me what was going on there.

khangtoh 16y ago

It looks more like a Twitter replacement rather than a Facebook.

cmelbye 16y ago

Anyone else turn HD on and look at the URLs? http://washington.joindiaspora.com/ 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.