Just as with any field, I think competition in the distributed social networking space will only be beneficial in the long run. Why should Diaspora adopt Apples

Just as with any field, I think competition in the distributed social networking space will only be beneficial in the long run. Why should Diaspora adopt Appleseed if they want to tackle the problem space in their own way, with their own ideas? More importantly, why should Diaspora hijack the work of Appleseed, simply because they're a more popular brand? I agree that it would be much quicker to start the movement away from Facebook if Diaspora leveraged other people's experience, but I'd be remiss to dictate how they should run their startup simply because they became popular so fast and I want to use them as a flagship for distributed social networking. This movement will eventually succeed on its own merits, whether or not Diaspora succeeds itself. In the meantime, let two teams with great potential (Appleseed and Diaspora) continue to develop their ideas about how they'd accomplish it.