7 ms·

Release of Diaspora v0.1.0.0

76 points by potomak 13y ago

tstactplsignore 13y ago
I have never thought the Diaspora project would succeed, because it's the social network nobody wants. Honestly I think that in the startup community there has been an enormous failure to understand what makes Facebook so popular. The most important features of Facebook are not the wall, and they're not sharing statuses or links. The most important features of Facebook, are: (1) Chat with a strong mobile app- for many people, Facebook chat has replaced personal (as opposed to work) email, texting, AIM, and Google Talk. It is a simple, sure-fire way to be able to contact anyone you know, and this is the single most important feature of Facebook. Does Diaspora have a strong chat? It doesn't have chat at all. (2) Facebook groups. It is fairly common for an informal friend group to create a Facebook group for communication, or for an entire class of a university or high school to create an incredibly active group. Most universities have varying groups for varying purposes. (3) Facebook events. It is common on college campuses for fraternity events and other student activities to be advertised through a Facebook event, and anyone who doesn't get invited to these events might feel out of the loop. Many informal invitations to parties between friends are also sent through Facebook events. (4) The user's information page. Immediately upon friending someone, you are generally able to discover their religion, their politics, their interests, and, most importantly, their relationship status. In this way, Facebook is a very important tool on both the dating and friend scene for young people. And, social networks like Google+ and Diaspora have utterly failed to properly address these features. Google+ took months to create events and groups, and honestly now the interface is so cluttered and clunky that I don't think it will ever be accessible to the basic user in its current form. Diaspora has utterly failed to implement any of these features. Young people want a social network where they can quickly discover what kind of person each other are and what their social situation is, share events and groups with each other, and chat with each other, especially on mobile. Being able to upload photos is also important, but sharing statuses and links is probably the least important feature. A social network which effectively implements all of these in a minimalist, privacy aware way, would without a doubt succeed.
- thepumpkin1979 13y ago
  Agree. You still need to add three huge Facebook pillars: Social Connection, Web Sharing and Applications.
- dsirijus 13y ago
  I'd definitely put: (0) photos Not trying to be quick witted here, it's my belief that's what's FB's core is about --- photos and their link to a (genuine) user profile.
- patrickaljord 13y ago
  The reason Facebook is successful is not because of these features per se, any web dev could implement photos, events, user profile etc. The strength of Facebook is it's user base and the network effect. Everybody's on Facebook because everybody's on Facebook. Now of course, Mark was the first to implement these features well, so that's why he won and by features I mean the stream and photos (events and apps arrived later when facebook had already won).
  - habitue 13y ago
    The parent was talking about why it got big. Your comment essentially says: "No it wasn't all of those things, it was 'stream and photos' "
    - Avshalom 13y ago
      No the parent can't be talking about why it "got big" because most of those features didn't really exist until it was big.
  - wslh 13y ago
    It is more truth if it's applied to Twitter. The first versions could be fully implemented in a hackathon and with much less scalability issues.
    - wslh 13y ago
mehrzad 13y ago
Maybe it's just me that noticed or felt this, but often times a service or product builds up a lot of hype and ends up being vaporware. Diaspora got mainstream attention when Zuckerberg donated money to them and when they complained at the height of Facebook's privacy problems. But then didn't deliver until like a year later? Similar thing happened with Google+. I remember my non-techie friends wanting to get in, but it took weeks for invites to open up until people didn't care anymore. The lesson in all this: when you have hype, DELIVER THE PRODUCT.
- fakeer 13y ago
  Right. When I got my G+ invite after weeks of desire to have a look what it's like, I list interest and I have only 2 posts on G+ till now, last was made 11 months ago. Not only it was late, it was an utter disappointment. Now, I use Facebook mainly for its Chat - both on mobile and desktop.
- teeja 13y ago
  And when you do deliver the product, don't chase away half the people who show up with stupid, arbitrary, exclusionary restrictions and rules. Because smart people won't dance on your little strings.
- shmerl 13y ago
  How is it vaporware when it's a working and functional social network? It's not as feature rich as it could be - there are a lot of things to improve there. But it's working, which is NOT vaporware by any means.
  - mehrzad 13y ago
    I signed up for an invite around the time it was announced. It took a while before even an alpha was released. Diaspora has unfortunately stagnated. The future rests with Status.net, Tent.io, or App.net in this field.
    - shmerl 13y ago
      You don't need invites - there are many pods with open registration. I'm sure there are many projects that aim for the future. Diaspora is actively developed, which shows that it aims for the future too. Your examples are core technologies, not end user social networks. May be Diaspora will use them as the inner federation mechanism, who knows. There is an on-going effort to redesign Diaspora's federation architecture.
Joeboy 13y ago
It's hard to see this getting traction now, but I'm still glad it exists. Maybe Facebook will somehow fuck up badly enough to push people onto Diaspora, although I can't really see how at this point.
- gurkendoktor 13y ago
  Sadly I think that Google and FB would need to fuck up at the same time (when hell freezes over). All the people I know who avoid FB are proudly on G+, for reasons I don't understand.
  - shardling 13y ago
    http://xkcd.com/918/ http://xkcd.com/918/
  - myko 13y ago
    > FB are proudly on G+, for reasons I don't understand. A couple reasons I've heard/seen: * Lots of folks are more trusting of Google with their data than they are of Facebook * Somewhat related to the above, circle management is a lot easier to get/use than Facebook's groups, and privacy management tends to be easier on G+ as a result * Facebook makes terrible mobile applications and Google+ has the nicest mobile client for a social networking site
  - ams6110 13y ago
    I avoid FB. And I'm on G+ strictly because a distributed work group I'm on uses hangouts to meet. I do nothing else with G+.
- fudged71 13y ago
  That's why facebook does small releases of beta features to gauge user feedback. They don't want to piss off lots of people at once. And whenever they make a large change to the settings, they make an equally large change to the UI so that people discuss the new look rather than the concerns over the settings. They've become too smart to lose their place as #1.
Casseres 13y ago
Diaspora reminds me of the tragedy of Duke Nukem Forever. Due to Duke Nukem 3D's success, they had too much funding and thus was trying to always incorporate the latest and greatest in game development. Once they were nearing completion, a better engine would be released, and so they would start over from scratch. [0] The original team behind Diaspora only asked for a little bit of money so they could get by while they spent their time working on it. Instead, they got too much money and recognition. Instead of delivering something half-baked, they drew it out and delivered something stale. The product they have now could have been what they delivered years ago, and years later (now), it could have been a successful competitor. [0] I forgot what article I read which was really interesting and would have preferred to link to, but alas this will have to do: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Duke_Nukem_Forever http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Duke_Nukem_Forev...
- at-fates-hands 13y ago
  I believe you're referring to this one in Wired from 2009 - "Learn to Let Go: How Success Killed Duke Nukem" http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_duke_nukem/all/ http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_duke_nukem/all/ Great article btw.
- polymatter 13y ago
  I believe this is the article which you refer to (http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_duke_nukem/all/ http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_duke_nukem/all/). Quote: > But because the technology kept getting better, Broussard was on a treadmill. He’d see a new game with a flashy graphics technique and demand the effect be incorporated into Duke Nukem Forever. “One day George started pushing for snow levels,” recalls a developer who worked on Duke Nukem Forever for several years starting in 2000. Why? “He had seen The Thing” — a new game based on the horror movie of the same name, set in the snowbound Antarctic — “and he wanted it.” The staff developed a running joke: If a new title comes out, don’t let George see it. When the influential shoot-’em-up Half-Life debuted in 1998, it opened with a famously interactive narrative sequence in which the player begins his workday in a laboratory, overhearing a coworker’s conversation that slowly sets a mood of dread. The day after Broussard played it, an employee told me, the cofounder walked into the office saying, “Oh my God, we have to have that in Duke Nukem Forever.” Edit: argh, at-fates-hands beat me to it.
gary4gar 13y ago
Due to the focus on privacy, I think Diaspora makes perfect sense as intranet social network for Companies, Govt, Colleges etc. I would wish Diaspora pivots in this direction
- iknowno_one 13y ago
  How does diaspora focus on privacy? The whole point of Diaspora was to implement a decentralized Facebook. Diaspora as it has been, is centralized, and doesn't seem to be anything but a smaller, crappier Facebook. Friendica does what Diaspora was supposed to do, and well, and can integrate with the Facebook API and download your personal Facebook feed into your Friendica feed.
  - synchronise 13y ago
    It does have decentralisation, to an extent. That's where the pod design comes in. Friendica also doesn't really fill the gap that effectively, it's slower than Diaspora and doesn't have a nice user experience. Also, the Facebook integration in Friendica doesn't scale well. https://github.com/friendica/friendica/wiki/How-to:-Friendica%E2%80%99s-Facebook-connector https://github.com/friendica/friendica/wiki/How-to:-Friendic... The restricting use section alludes to his. But if you were after a social network that is completely decentralised i.e. no servers, take a look at Nightweb. http://nightweb.net/ http://nightweb.net/
  - shmerl 13y ago
    > Diaspora as it has been, is centralized Diaspora is as much decentralized, as many pods participate in it. There are many single user pods which demonstrates its decentralization pretty well. So your statement above is false. I'd compare it to federated XMPP network - there are major servers with many users, and there are single user servers as well.
dasil003 13y ago
Diaspora highlights my biggest worry as an entrepreneur: building something for the way I wish users were versus the way they actually are.
- PavlovsCat 13y ago
  I hear you. But also, hear this: It’s not the job of the artist to give the audience what the audience wants. If the audience knew what they needed, then they wouldn’t be the audience. They would be the artists. It is the job of artists to give the audience what they need. - Alan Moore ( http://intellectual-thoughts.com/Alan%20Moore%20Quote.htm http://intellectual-thoughts.com/Alan%20Moore%20Quote.htm )
  - quomopete 13y ago
    but the question remains: Are social media art? are programmers of social media artists? I do not doubt there are programmers that are artists and programs or implementations of programming that is art. That's not what I am asking. And I don't mean art in the sense of "State of the art" or "term of art", as in patents.
    - NegativeK 13y ago
      I think PavlovsCat is saying that software shares a trait with art via this Alan Moore quote instead of saying that software is art.
aw3c2 13y ago
Bah, empty white page until you enable Javascript. Is there some sort of roadmap somewhere? I could not find one.
- shmerl 13y ago
  See: https://www.loomio.org/groups/194 https://www.loomio.org/groups/194
ville 13y ago
What kind of version is v0.1.0.0? First major version? First minor version? Something in between? It would be so much easier to reason about version numbers if everyone would stick to Semantic Versioning[0]. [0]: http://semver.org/ http://semver.org/
- hayksaakian 13y ago
  Semver is explicitly ambiguous about versions < 1
  - pseut 13y ago
    Yeah, but not about whether you're at a version < 1.
shmerl 13y ago
It's good to see Diaspora moving forward. Since the original creators team mostly stopped contributing to the project, it's now developed by community developers.
shmerl 13y ago
For those who asked about chat functionality in Diaspora - the project is looking into enabling a chat capability, naturally using interoperable protocols like XMPP. It's not as trivial as it seems though, since it will require running additional XMPP server on the pod. Another option is to allow using external XMPP accounts for the web UI. Having a chat is not really the highest priority, since there are tons of federated XMPP servers around already, and standalone XMPP clients that are light years better and feature rich than any possible web UI. But having web UI for chat as a convenience is still useful and attractive, so see the discussion here about adding this feature: https://www.loomio.org/discussions/3678 https://www.loomio.org/discussions/3678

76 points by potomak 13y ago

I have never thought the Diaspora project would succeed, because it's the social network nobody wants. Honestly I think that in the startup community there has been an enormous failure to understand what makes Facebook so popular. The most important features of Facebook are not the wall, and they're not sharing statuses or links. The most important features of Facebook, are: (1) Chat with a strong mobile app- for many people, Facebook chat has replaced personal (as opposed to work) email, texting, AIM, and Google Talk. It is a simple, sure-fire way to be able to contact anyone you know, and this is the single most important feature of Facebook. Does Diaspora have a strong chat? It doesn't have chat at all. (2) Facebook groups. It is fairly common for an informal friend group to create a Facebook group for communication, or for an entire class of a university or high school to create an incredibly active group. Most universities have varying groups for varying purposes. (3) Facebook events. It is common on college campuses for fraternity events and other student activities to be advertised through a Facebook event, and anyone who doesn't get invited to these events might feel out of the loop. Many informal invitations to parties between friends are also sent through Facebook events. (4) The user's information page. Immediately upon friending someone, you are generally able to discover their religion, their politics, their interests, and, most importantly, their relationship status. In this way, Facebook is a very important tool on both the dating and friend scene for young people. And, social networks like Google+ and Diaspora have utterly failed to properly address these features. Google+ took months to create events and groups, and honestly now the interface is so cluttered and clunky that I don't think it will ever be accessible to the basic user in its current form. Diaspora has utterly failed to implement any of these features. Young people want a social network where they can quickly discover what kind of person each other are and what their social situation is, share events and groups with each other, and chat with each other, especially on mobile. Being able to upload photos is also important, but sharing statuses and links is probably the least important feature. A social network which effectively implements all of these in a minimalist, privacy aware way, would without a doubt succeed.

thepumpkin1979 13y ago
Agree. You still need to add three huge Facebook pillars: Social Connection, Web Sharing and Applications.
dsirijus 13y ago
I'd definitely put: (0) photos Not trying to be quick witted here, it's my belief that's what's FB's core is about --- photos and their link to a (genuine) user profile.
patrickaljord 13y ago
The reason Facebook is successful is not because of these features per se, any web dev could implement photos, events, user profile etc. The strength of Facebook is it's user base and the network effect. Everybody's on Facebook because everybody's on Facebook. Now of course, Mark was the first to implement these features well, so that's why he won and by features I mean the stream and photos (events and apps arrived later when facebook had already won).
- habitue 13y ago
  The parent was talking about why it got big. Your comment essentially says: "No it wasn't all of those things, it was 'stream and photos' "
  - Avshalom 13y ago
    No the parent can't be talking about why it "got big" because most of those features didn't really exist until it was big.
- wslh 13y ago
  It is more truth if it's applied to Twitter. The first versions could be fully implemented in a hackathon and with much less scalability issues.
  - wslh 13y ago

mehrzad 13y ago

Maybe it's just me that noticed or felt this, but often times a service or product builds up a lot of hype and ends up being vaporware. Diaspora got mainstream attention when Zuckerberg donated money to them and when they complained at the height of Facebook's privacy problems. But then didn't deliver until like a year later? Similar thing happened with Google+. I remember my non-techie friends wanting to get in, but it took weeks for invites to open up until people didn't care anymore. The lesson in all this: when you have hype, DELIVER THE PRODUCT.

fakeer 13y ago
Right. When I got my G+ invite after weeks of desire to have a look what it's like, I list interest and I have only 2 posts on G+ till now, last was made 11 months ago. Not only it was late, it was an utter disappointment. Now, I use Facebook mainly for its Chat - both on mobile and desktop.
teeja 13y ago
And when you do deliver the product, don't chase away half the people who show up with stupid, arbitrary, exclusionary restrictions and rules. Because smart people won't dance on your little strings.
shmerl 13y ago
How is it vaporware when it's a working and functional social network? It's not as feature rich as it could be - there are a lot of things to improve there. But it's working, which is NOT vaporware by any means.
- mehrzad 13y ago
  I signed up for an invite around the time it was announced. It took a while before even an alpha was released. Diaspora has unfortunately stagnated. The future rests with Status.net, Tent.io, or App.net in this field.
  - shmerl 13y ago
    You don't need invites - there are many pods with open registration. I'm sure there are many projects that aim for the future. Diaspora is actively developed, which shows that it aims for the future too. Your examples are core technologies, not end user social networks. May be Diaspora will use them as the inner federation mechanism, who knows. There is an on-going effort to redesign Diaspora's federation architecture.

Joeboy 13y ago

It's hard to see this getting traction now, but I'm still glad it exists. Maybe Facebook will somehow fuck up badly enough to push people onto Diaspora, although I can't really see how at this point.

gurkendoktor 13y ago
Sadly I think that Google and FB would need to fuck up at the same time (when hell freezes over). All the people I know who avoid FB are proudly on G+, for reasons I don't understand.
- shardling 13y ago
  http://xkcd.com/918/ http://xkcd.com/918/
- myko 13y ago
  > FB are proudly on G+, for reasons I don't understand. A couple reasons I've heard/seen: * Lots of folks are more trusting of Google with their data than they are of Facebook * Somewhat related to the above, circle management is a lot easier to get/use than Facebook's groups, and privacy management tends to be easier on G+ as a result * Facebook makes terrible mobile applications and Google+ has the nicest mobile client for a social networking site
- ams6110 13y ago
  I avoid FB. And I'm on G+ strictly because a distributed work group I'm on uses hangouts to meet. I do nothing else with G+.
fudged71 13y ago
That's why facebook does small releases of beta features to gauge user feedback. They don't want to piss off lots of people at once. And whenever they make a large change to the settings, they make an equally large change to the UI so that people discuss the new look rather than the concerns over the settings. They've become too smart to lose their place as #1.

Casseres 13y ago

Diaspora reminds me of the tragedy of Duke Nukem Forever. Due to Duke Nukem 3D's success, they had too much funding and thus was trying to always incorporate the latest and greatest in game development. Once they were nearing completion, a better engine would be released, and so they would start over from scratch. [0] The original team behind Diaspora only asked for a little bit of money so they could get by while they spent their time working on it. Instead, they got too much money and recognition. Instead of delivering something half-baked, they drew it out and delivered something stale. The product they have now could have been what they delivered years ago, and years later (now), it could have been a successful competitor. [0] I forgot what article I read which was really interesting and would have preferred to link to, but alas this will have to do: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Duke_Nukem_Forever http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Duke_Nukem_Forev...

at-fates-hands 13y ago
I believe you're referring to this one in Wired from 2009 - "Learn to Let Go: How Success Killed Duke Nukem" http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_duke_nukem/all/ http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_duke_nukem/all/ Great article btw.
polymatter 13y ago
I believe this is the article which you refer to (http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_duke_nukem/all/ http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_duke_nukem/all/). Quote: > But because the technology kept getting better, Broussard was on a treadmill. He’d see a new game with a flashy graphics technique and demand the effect be incorporated into Duke Nukem Forever. “One day George started pushing for snow levels,” recalls a developer who worked on Duke Nukem Forever for several years starting in 2000. Why? “He had seen The Thing” — a new game based on the horror movie of the same name, set in the snowbound Antarctic — “and he wanted it.” The staff developed a running joke: If a new title comes out, don’t let George see it. When the influential shoot-’em-up Half-Life debuted in 1998, it opened with a famously interactive narrative sequence in which the player begins his workday in a laboratory, overhearing a coworker’s conversation that slowly sets a mood of dread. The day after Broussard played it, an employee told me, the cofounder walked into the office saying, “Oh my God, we have to have that in Duke Nukem Forever.” Edit: argh, at-fates-hands beat me to it.

gary4gar 13y ago

Due to the focus on privacy, I think Diaspora makes perfect sense as intranet social network for Companies, Govt, Colleges etc. I would wish Diaspora pivots in this direction

iknowno_one 13y ago
How does diaspora focus on privacy? The whole point of Diaspora was to implement a decentralized Facebook. Diaspora as it has been, is centralized, and doesn't seem to be anything but a smaller, crappier Facebook. Friendica does what Diaspora was supposed to do, and well, and can integrate with the Facebook API and download your personal Facebook feed into your Friendica feed.
- synchronise 13y ago
  It does have decentralisation, to an extent. That's where the pod design comes in. Friendica also doesn't really fill the gap that effectively, it's slower than Diaspora and doesn't have a nice user experience. Also, the Facebook integration in Friendica doesn't scale well. https://github.com/friendica/friendica/wiki/How-to:-Friendica%E2%80%99s-Facebook-connector https://github.com/friendica/friendica/wiki/How-to:-Friendic... The restricting use section alludes to his. But if you were after a social network that is completely decentralised i.e. no servers, take a look at Nightweb. http://nightweb.net/ http://nightweb.net/
- shmerl 13y ago
  > Diaspora as it has been, is centralized Diaspora is as much decentralized, as many pods participate in it. There are many single user pods which demonstrates its decentralization pretty well. So your statement above is false. I'd compare it to federated XMPP network - there are major servers with many users, and there are single user servers as well.

dasil003 13y ago

Diaspora highlights my biggest worry as an entrepreneur: building something for the way I wish users were versus the way they actually are.

PavlovsCat 13y ago
I hear you. But also, hear this: It’s not the job of the artist to give the audience what the audience wants. If the audience knew what they needed, then they wouldn’t be the audience. They would be the artists. It is the job of artists to give the audience what they need. - Alan Moore ( http://intellectual-thoughts.com/Alan%20Moore%20Quote.htm http://intellectual-thoughts.com/Alan%20Moore%20Quote.htm )
- quomopete 13y ago
  but the question remains: Are social media art? are programmers of social media artists? I do not doubt there are programmers that are artists and programs or implementations of programming that is art. That's not what I am asking. And I don't mean art in the sense of "State of the art" or "term of art", as in patents.
  - NegativeK 13y ago
    I think PavlovsCat is saying that software shares a trait with art via this Alan Moore quote instead of saying that software is art.

aw3c2 13y ago

Bah, empty white page until you enable Javascript. Is there some sort of roadmap somewhere? I could not find one.

shmerl 13y ago
See: https://www.loomio.org/groups/194 https://www.loomio.org/groups/194

ville 13y ago

What kind of version is v0.1.0.0? First major version? First minor version? Something in between? It would be so much easier to reason about version numbers if everyone would stick to Semantic Versioning[0]. [0]: http://semver.org/ http://semver.org/

hayksaakian 13y ago
Semver is explicitly ambiguous about versions < 1
- pseut 13y ago
  Yeah, but not about whether you're at a version < 1.

shmerl 13y ago

It's good to see Diaspora moving forward. Since the original creators team mostly stopped contributing to the project, it's now developed by community developers.

shmerl 13y ago

For those who asked about chat functionality in Diaspora - the project is looking into enabling a chat capability, naturally using interoperable protocols like XMPP. It's not as trivial as it seems though, since it will require running additional XMPP server on the pod. Another option is to allow using external XMPP accounts for the web UI. Having a chat is not really the highest priority, since there are tons of federated XMPP servers around already, and standalone XMPP clients that are light years better and feature rich than any possible web UI. But having web UI for chat as a convenience is still useful and attractive, so see the discussion here about adding this feature: https://www.loomio.org/discussions/3678 https://www.loomio.org/discussions/3678