21 ms·

Private Alpha Invites Going Out Today

50 points by karlzt 16y ago

tptacek 16y ago
Because if you're concerned about Facebook's privacy standards, why not just give all your information away to anyone who knows how to break a Rails app? At least those people have earned it.
mikeryan 16y ago
Seriously? What's the point of private invites to a social network? Who am I going to be networking with if I'm the only one of my friends with an invite? Better to do something like Facebook. Pick a small, manageable existing network (like Harvard or in this case NYU?) and allow those users to join.
- cryptoz 16y ago
  This is exactly what killed Google Wave: lots of hype, followed by secret invites. A collaboration tool launched specifically disallowing collaboration. Stupid.
  - jonknee 16y ago
    What killed Google Wave was that it was a confusing product without clear goals. The invite process probably extended its lifespan by hiding how poor it was to most of the public.
    - mseebach 16y ago
      That might well be a factor, but I, for one, decided against using Wave for three distinct occasions where I suspected it might have been a good fit, because I couldn't get invites for all stakeholders.
  - ThomPete 16y ago
    It might have killed Wave but it was what made Gmail a success.
    - gfodor 16y ago
      Not the same thing, at all. Getting an invite with Gmail didn't mean you could only use Gmail to communicate with others who had received invites.
    - generalk 16y ago
      Huh? That's not at all what made Gmail a succes. If I'm on Wave, and you're not on Wave, we can't use Wave together. That's the end of it. If I'm on Gmail and you're on AOLMail, we can email one another, and I can tell you how awesome Gmail is. Gmail was a well-defined product with obvious benefit. Wave wasn't, and to boot you couldn't immediately use it for its intended purposes.
      - Wilduck 16y ago
        This makes me think that Diaspora needs to be (or at least be moving towards) a "social protocol" like SMTP. Since something like this doesn't already exist, having a small user base may be helpful in providing feedback to developing one.
        michaelchisari 16y ago
        There's ones in the works. Diaspora uses an amalgamation of protocols (webfinger, ostatus, a few others), Appleseed uses a homegrown protocol called QuickSocial, but is designed to be protocol agnostic, and there are a number of participating projects (spearheaded by StatusNet) working on a federated social protocol. Who will win out is anybody's guess, but there's solid work progressing in that arena.
- omarchowdhury 16y ago
  Diaspora does a bad job of explaining their product. It is not a social network, but rather a open source software project for a standalone social networking application that I assume has the ability to interact with other Diaspora installs (called pods). But you also did a bad job of reading the post. They are sending alpha invites out for people to use their current software themselves, and potentially contribute changes. Not join a social network called Diaspora.
  - mikeryan 16y ago
    I didn't read the post - because this thread didn't link to it.
- joe_the_user 16y ago
  You help test the software and maybe network experimental early adopters. Diaspora doesn't necessarily have to follow the same rout as Facebook.
michaelchisari 16y ago
If you're interested in a project which is quite a bit farther along, Appleseed has been in development since 2004, and has a lot of completed features (honestly, more features completed than Diaspora even has on it's roadmap). http://opensource.appleseedproject.org http://opensource.appleseedproject.org A lot of times when people think about open source social networking, they think about it in the frame of reference of centralized start-ups: That you need to win over users and grow as big as possible. That's not true, actually. You need to win over administrators, you need to convince them why they should run your software, that your software is flexible, well-written, stable, and infinitely customizable. This is why Appleseed was written as a component-based MVC framework, with clear separation between logic and presentation, and a plugin architecture which allows extensibility, and even the ability to support multiple protocols concurrently. We'll all be compatible in the end, but I think the winner will be the one which attracts third party developers and sysadmins, not the one which initially attracts the most users. Like I've said before, users don't have to care what a Joomla or a Drupal is, and hype isn't nearly as important to open source as many seem to think.
- pavs 16y ago
  I am not a big fan of Diaspora, but every-time there is a story on diaspora I have seen you plug Appleseed and sometimes badmouth Diaspora. First few times it was ok, not it just feels like spamming. Just because its open source, doesn't mean the project can't be spammed. Maybe there is a better way to promote appleseed.
  - michaelchisari 16y ago
    I'm an active member of HN, and I often plug other open source distributed social networking projects as well (ie, GNU Social). I feel, as a participating HN member, I do have a right to talk about my projects, and I usually take the time to discuss philosophical differences between the projects as well, in order to spur discussion, and not simply post a link. I do see distributed social networking as a group effort, and I think the hype is tilted in favor of the weakest link, so I do try and balance that out. If this is an issue, I apologize, but I thought talking about the projects we were working on was why this site exists. If people feel differently, though, I can delete my comments, and not post on related articles anymore.
uast23 16y ago
A private invite for such a hyped product will add more to the interest among people who haven't been invited. Good going!
wickedchicken 16y ago
One thing I've been trying to figure out about Diaspora is the implication of deleting a photo or redacting a comment. As far as I can tell this is done by "revoking a user's encryption keys at the seed" but this means that a user must connect to the seed every time content is requested. Surely there is a form of caching mechanism; if so do 'delete requests' get pushed out to the caches? The implications of this are telling: at least with facebook I can delete a photo and cross my fingers that nobody has seen it yet.
- revetkn 16y ago
  I'm not sure considerations like this have occurred to the dev team when they don't do even very basic webapp security correctly...
- michaelchisari 16y ago
  I think that's a general concern with distributed social networking, and something that I've struggled with. Part of it is a social problem, resulting in the years we've spent in centralized walled gardens. Nobody has the expectation that you can rescind an email, because the decentralized nature disallows that, so people socially adjust to that. Better distributed protocols shorten the window, so you can send out an update, then delete it, and hope nobody's seen it, and that the delete command was followed by all points. But there hasn't been a satisfactory solution to ensure that the data can be completely rescinded, regardless of whether a receiving host acts improperly. I'm always open to ideas on that front, as I bet most people in distributed social networking are.
  - joe_the_user 16y ago
    The Facebook message you want to revoke is the Facebook message someone is going to take a screen-shot of. The idea that any posts anywhere are going to be revocable seems to me to ultimately be a fantasy Facebook uses to impel people to deposit all their data on Facebook (and Facebook corporation itself saves all the information that's ever posted on the site, oddly enough). Developing distributed social networks would be easier if you drop any efforts at revoking data. I suppose that's my idea.
icandoitbetter 16y ago
Started a web server to try it. Not usable at the moment. Does't seem very promising either. Will check back for updates in a year.
stwe 16y ago
"Share what you want, with who you want." Is no one else put off by that grammar mistake centered on their front page? I'm not a native speaker, but it sounds just plain wrong.
- anthonyb 16y ago
  It's a headline. Headlines have a grammar all of their own. Since they're essentially a hook to make you read more, good headlines will be short/catchy/interesting. In this case, they're using alliteration, plus they're attacking one of Facebook's weak points (lack of privacy control).
  - hammerdr 16y ago
    Also using iambic tetrameter. share WHAT you WANT with WHO you WANT The only issue I have is that the comma indicates a break which seems unnatural to me. That isn't always bad if you're trying to emphasize two different thoughts but I think of that slogan as a single cohesive thought rather than two different ones.
makmanalp 16y ago
http://blog.joindiaspora.com/2010/11/23/private-alpha-released.html http://blog.joindiaspora.com/2010/11/23/private-alpha-releas...
kilian 16y ago
I got five invites to give away, let me know if you're interested. Then connect with me using my username kilian@joindiaspora.com and I'll add you to my hackernews aspect :) Edit: Downvote? Seriously?
- blhack 16y ago
  If you're still offering, I'll take one. (You didn't say to email you or message here? email is ryan -> gibsonandlily dto cmo
uxp 16y ago
How is this private alpha targeting developers any different than already having the code pulled from GitHub and running using `rails server`?

50 points by karlzt 16y ago

Because if you're concerned about Facebook's privacy standards, why not just give all your information away to anyone who knows how to break a Rails app? At least those people have earned it.

mikeryan 16y ago

Seriously? What's the point of private invites to a social network? Who am I going to be networking with if I'm the only one of my friends with an invite? Better to do something like Facebook. Pick a small, manageable existing network (like Harvard or in this case NYU?) and allow those users to join.

cryptoz 16y ago
This is exactly what killed Google Wave: lots of hype, followed by secret invites. A collaboration tool launched specifically disallowing collaboration. Stupid.
- jonknee 16y ago
  What killed Google Wave was that it was a confusing product without clear goals. The invite process probably extended its lifespan by hiding how poor it was to most of the public.
  - mseebach 16y ago
    That might well be a factor, but I, for one, decided against using Wave for three distinct occasions where I suspected it might have been a good fit, because I couldn't get invites for all stakeholders.
- ThomPete 16y ago
  It might have killed Wave but it was what made Gmail a success.
  - gfodor 16y ago
    Not the same thing, at all. Getting an invite with Gmail didn't mean you could only use Gmail to communicate with others who had received invites.
  - generalk 16y ago
    Huh? That's not at all what made Gmail a succes. If I'm on Wave, and you're not on Wave, we can't use Wave together. That's the end of it. If I'm on Gmail and you're on AOLMail, we can email one another, and I can tell you how awesome Gmail is. Gmail was a well-defined product with obvious benefit. Wave wasn't, and to boot you couldn't immediately use it for its intended purposes.
    - Wilduck 16y ago
      This makes me think that Diaspora needs to be (or at least be moving towards) a "social protocol" like SMTP. Since something like this doesn't already exist, having a small user base may be helpful in providing feedback to developing one.
      - michaelchisari 16y ago
        There's ones in the works. Diaspora uses an amalgamation of protocols (webfinger, ostatus, a few others), Appleseed uses a homegrown protocol called QuickSocial, but is designed to be protocol agnostic, and there are a number of participating projects (spearheaded by StatusNet) working on a federated social protocol. Who will win out is anybody's guess, but there's solid work progressing in that arena.
omarchowdhury 16y ago
Diaspora does a bad job of explaining their product. It is not a social network, but rather a open source software project for a standalone social networking application that I assume has the ability to interact with other Diaspora installs (called pods). But you also did a bad job of reading the post. They are sending alpha invites out for people to use their current software themselves, and potentially contribute changes. Not join a social network called Diaspora.
- mikeryan 16y ago
  I didn't read the post - because this thread didn't link to it.
joe_the_user 16y ago
You help test the software and maybe network experimental early adopters. Diaspora doesn't necessarily have to follow the same rout as Facebook.

michaelchisari 16y ago

If you're interested in a project which is quite a bit farther along, Appleseed has been in development since 2004, and has a lot of completed features (honestly, more features completed than Diaspora even has on it's roadmap). http://opensource.appleseedproject.org http://opensource.appleseedproject.org A lot of times when people think about open source social networking, they think about it in the frame of reference of centralized start-ups: That you need to win over users and grow as big as possible. That's not true, actually. You need to win over administrators, you need to convince them why they should run your software, that your software is flexible, well-written, stable, and infinitely customizable. This is why Appleseed was written as a component-based MVC framework, with clear separation between logic and presentation, and a plugin architecture which allows extensibility, and even the ability to support multiple protocols concurrently. We'll all be compatible in the end, but I think the winner will be the one which attracts third party developers and sysadmins, not the one which initially attracts the most users. Like I've said before, users don't have to care what a Joomla or a Drupal is, and hype isn't nearly as important to open source as many seem to think.

pavs 16y ago
I am not a big fan of Diaspora, but every-time there is a story on diaspora I have seen you plug Appleseed and sometimes badmouth Diaspora. First few times it was ok, not it just feels like spamming. Just because its open source, doesn't mean the project can't be spammed. Maybe there is a better way to promote appleseed.
- michaelchisari 16y ago
  I'm an active member of HN, and I often plug other open source distributed social networking projects as well (ie, GNU Social). I feel, as a participating HN member, I do have a right to talk about my projects, and I usually take the time to discuss philosophical differences between the projects as well, in order to spur discussion, and not simply post a link. I do see distributed social networking as a group effort, and I think the hype is tilted in favor of the weakest link, so I do try and balance that out. If this is an issue, I apologize, but I thought talking about the projects we were working on was why this site exists. If people feel differently, though, I can delete my comments, and not post on related articles anymore.

uast23 16y ago

A private invite for such a hyped product will add more to the interest among people who haven't been invited. Good going!

wickedchicken 16y ago

One thing I've been trying to figure out about Diaspora is the implication of deleting a photo or redacting a comment. As far as I can tell this is done by "revoking a user's encryption keys at the seed" but this means that a user must connect to the seed every time content is requested. Surely there is a form of caching mechanism; if so do 'delete requests' get pushed out to the caches? The implications of this are telling: at least with facebook I can delete a photo and cross my fingers that nobody has seen it yet.

revetkn 16y ago
I'm not sure considerations like this have occurred to the dev team when they don't do even very basic webapp security correctly...
michaelchisari 16y ago
I think that's a general concern with distributed social networking, and something that I've struggled with. Part of it is a social problem, resulting in the years we've spent in centralized walled gardens. Nobody has the expectation that you can rescind an email, because the decentralized nature disallows that, so people socially adjust to that. Better distributed protocols shorten the window, so you can send out an update, then delete it, and hope nobody's seen it, and that the delete command was followed by all points. But there hasn't been a satisfactory solution to ensure that the data can be completely rescinded, regardless of whether a receiving host acts improperly. I'm always open to ideas on that front, as I bet most people in distributed social networking are.
- joe_the_user 16y ago
  The Facebook message you want to revoke is the Facebook message someone is going to take a screen-shot of. The idea that any posts anywhere are going to be revocable seems to me to ultimately be a fantasy Facebook uses to impel people to deposit all their data on Facebook (and Facebook corporation itself saves all the information that's ever posted on the site, oddly enough). Developing distributed social networks would be easier if you drop any efforts at revoking data. I suppose that's my idea.

icandoitbetter 16y ago

Started a web server to try it. Not usable at the moment. Does't seem very promising either. Will check back for updates in a year.

stwe 16y ago

"Share what you want, with who you want." Is no one else put off by that grammar mistake centered on their front page? I'm not a native speaker, but it sounds just plain wrong.

anthonyb 16y ago
It's a headline. Headlines have a grammar all of their own. Since they're essentially a hook to make you read more, good headlines will be short/catchy/interesting. In this case, they're using alliteration, plus they're attacking one of Facebook's weak points (lack of privacy control).
- hammerdr 16y ago
  Also using iambic tetrameter. share WHAT you WANT with WHO you WANT The only issue I have is that the comma indicates a break which seems unnatural to me. That isn't always bad if you're trying to emphasize two different thoughts but I think of that slogan as a single cohesive thought rather than two different ones.

makmanalp 16y ago

http://blog.joindiaspora.com/2010/11/23/private-alpha-released.html http://blog.joindiaspora.com/2010/11/23/private-alpha-releas...

kilian 16y ago

I got five invites to give away, let me know if you're interested. Then connect with me using my username kilian@joindiaspora.com and I'll add you to my hackernews aspect :) Edit: Downvote? Seriously?

blhack 16y ago
If you're still offering, I'll take one. (You didn't say to email you or message here? email is ryan -> gibsonandlily dto cmo

uxp 16y ago

How is this private alpha targeting developers any different than already having the code pulled from GitHub and running using `rails server`?