Actually lack of good development may be the problem. Mike Cardwell's opinion of status.net certainly isn't very high: https://twitter.com/mickeyc/status/23679

Actually lack of good development may be the problem. Mike Cardwell's opinion of status.net certainly isn't very high: https://twitter.com/mickeyc/status/236796994532827136 https://twitter.com/mickeyc/status/236796994532827136 and a lot of disaspora's momentum was destroyed by their early security issues (someone correct me if I'm wrong on this, I wasn't following diaspora that closely at the time). Remember that as soon as even a few distributed or open systems get going they can be linked together. At that point any new competitors to FB/twitter have a strong incentive to be open as well because it gives them that precious starting network. Then, like good guerillas, you engage the centralized service in a drawn out struggle. They have to win every time, because as soon as their userbase slips it's never coming back. You only have to win once. (You can lose unlimited companies/protocols as long as more and better ones are taking their place) EDIT: P.S. I totally stole this strategy from a Pournelle book (Prince of Sparta). "We Helots be coming back for more. Again . . . and again . . . and again." Just because they're the bad guys doesn't mean we can't use their tactics!