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Although this is pretty neat, I can't help but feel that Diaspora could have been so much more. Not only did they receive significant media coverage, but we sho

by dvt 13y ago

Although this is pretty neat, I can't help but feel that Diaspora could have been so much more. Not only did they receive significant media coverage, but we shouldn't forget the $200k+ they got from their crowdfunding campaigns. I'm not one to bash on starving student start-ups (I'm guilty of the same starry-eyed naivete), but I can't help but feel a bit cynical about the Diaspora situation. They had a chance (a real chance) and they blew it. And in some ways, I feel that if they would have succeeded, we wouldn't still have to be using Facebook or G+ or what-have-you: that is, services that go out of their way to breach privacy in every way imaginable. I'm not an anti-NSA Free Softare Foundation e-hippie fanatic (let's be fair: there's a ton on HN), but there is a very real and very dangerous loss of privacy when using for-profit services like Facebook to store a significant portion of very sensitive and private information. So I'm not worried about the NSA as much as I'm worried about Facebook or Google circumventing ethical principles in lieu of targeted advertising, using my face/name without my consent, backing up private data when I want it deleted, etc. Diaspora could have been a solution, but it failed. In a very real sense, it failed us all. So every time I read about Disapora, I can't help but let out a sad sigh. I wish I didn't have to use Facebook. I really do. I wish I had a chance ($200k and a free trip to the Bay sounds nice) to disrupt the social media sphere; but alas, I do not. Diaspora did; and now, years down the road, it hasn't even reached a 500k user base[0]. [0] https://diasp.eu/stats https://diasp.eu/stats

colmvp 13y ago
200k is not a lot of money, especially when competing against a multi-billion dollar company that has had a number of years head start. Furthermore, the advantage the project provided was never really clear from a laymen's perspective. My bias belief is that most people don't love Facebook but don't have a necessary reason to move elsewhere especially when a social network relies on ones social network. IMO, G+ has a prettier UI and some cooler features. But while a lot of my network has joined, few have used it again after launch. Ultimately if they were to have done it again years back, I think it would've been interesting to do a pure mobile social networking app. Again bias perspective, but I've noticed most of my online interactions with friends nowadays isn't through Facebook, e-mail, or Twitter, but through Whatsapp, Snapchat, Instagram (yes, I know Facebook bought them) and Vine.
- dvt 13y ago
  I don't disagree with you, but I think the media coverage was worth a lot more than the $200k -- and they received a lot of media coverage.
  - roel_v 13y ago
    On nerd sites maybe. The few mentions in the mainstream press were mostly 'look how quaint, these pocket protector weirdos are building a second Facebook except that... uh... yeah just a second Facebook'.
    - dvt 13y ago
      This is just incorrect. I read articles on CNN, Huffpo, FOX News, etc. (granted, their tech sections) about it. The general sentiment was that it was supposed to be an "anti-Facebook" -- that's a very good starting point to be at, especially considering most people's general disillusionment with FB.
    - dangayle 13y ago
      NY Times is a nerd site?
- saltcod 13y ago
  200k isn't a lot of money for all the ambition this project had, and I don't think it really had a good shot against Facebook — outside the HN-type audience.
- weego 13y ago
  200k is a lot of money regardless of circumstance. And they were never actually competing against anyone, let alone Facebook. That is just naiveness on the part of people that believe that social anything is actually a software problem.
danabramov 13y ago
May I reply with a Russian proverb? “If mushrooms grew in the mouth, that would be not mouth but kitchen garden.”
copyninja 13y ago
> I wish I didn't have to use Facebook. Your wish can still come true have you tried friendica? Of course the project never got hyped at all no one gave enough money to them but It has almost all features including the federation. After proving himself ones the author of software Mike McGravin has moved on to create much more stable scalable Red# [1] http://github.com/friendica/friendica/ http://github.com/friendica/friendica/ [2] http://github.com/friendica/red http://github.com/friendica/red I always feel bad when Diaspora gets hyped and real valuable project like friendica doesn't get any credits :(
- LargeWu 13y ago
  Social apps are not about software features. The entire value of facebook comes from the fact that everybody else uses it.
  - rogerbraun 13y ago
    That's not completely true. If it were true, nobody would use facebook because everybody already has email.
  - copyninja 13y ago
    If you want people to use alternative to already existing first then the alternative should have similar+ better features. And friendica has good people base only it lacks media coverage. And my whole point was that Diaspora did nothing but got wide media coverage and people got dissatisfied but friendica has deadly feature but no media coverage
21echoes 13y ago
Diaspora was 4 (and then quickly 3, and then tragically only 2) just-out-of-college/still-in-college dudes who were tasked with building something competitive with one of the most used pieces of software of all time while inventing-brand-new / re-purposing-in-novel-ways encryption and federation technology to store and transport the data. They did amazingly well, all things considered, and the project continues along at a faster clip than most all of the flash-in-the-pan "whisper tech" / "encrypted rss" / etc stuff I see at the top of HN every day since Snowden. If just 5% of the people who bitched about Diaspora "failing" or tried to build their own competitor from scratch just contributed instead, then I think we'd be much farther along.
- zalew 13y ago
  > If just 5% of the people who bitched about Diaspora "failing" or tried to build their own competitor from scratch just contributed instead, then I think we'd be much farther along. What incentive does anyone have in contributing to a project that burned 200k and failed? Building something on your own with a clean slate and 100% share in the whole process from ground up is an obvious choice IMO (besides the general idea of pursuing 'the next facebook only better because orwell').
  - melling 13y ago
    Hasn't this already been answered in a TED talk? http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_how_to_start_a_movement.html http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_how_to_start_a_movemen...
  - rogerbraun 13y ago
    I contributed this release cycle. My incentive is that Diaspora is already a working replacement for FB or G+, but still lacks some features or has a few warts. I tried to fix one of these and it's now in the new release and Diaspora is a little better. That's how open source is supposed to work, isn't it?
    - zalew 13y ago
      > Diaspora is already a working replacement for FB or G+, but still lacks some features like people using it?
krichman 13y ago
> So I'm not worried about the NSA as much as I'm worried about Facebook or Google circumventing ethical principles in lieu of targeted advertising, using my face/name without my consent, backing up private data when I want it deleted, etc. But this is what all pragmatic people should be worried about. I highly doubt the NSA is going to care about me at any point during my lifetime (although I am a fanatic and would prefer they are unable to), but I measure the odds of Facebook misusing my information in the ways you mentioned as very high. The largest problem I have with the NSA is that it's a breach of the 4th Amendment AFAIC and I don't like the direction US law enforcement is going in general if these things are condoned. I never thought Diaspora would be successful, but I am disappointed to be right on this one so far.
dasil003 13y ago
I question whether it could have. Sure they got enough money to make it happen, but I don't think that was the hard part. The hard part is getting any kind of traction with regular people. The fact that they got money and attention makes the failure more visible and thus makes us all the more disappointed, and I think it's actually a net negative because what they were trying to do could only come from a place of traction not publicity.
captainmuon 13y ago
The only way this could take off is if they would offer federation with Facebook. I would have an account on some Diaspora server, you'd have one on Facebook, and we could post to each other's walls without restrictions. It would be really easy to hack together an interface. Diaspora would read from Facebook via the API, and post to Facebook via puppet accounts (until they get a proper federation API). Problem is that Facebook will quickly kill the app and delete your account for violating their TOS. What we really, really need is legislation that forces critical social networks (say, > one million users) to offer federation. All the technical ingredients are already there (protocols like open graph, extensions to XMPP, ...), the corporations just have to allow it. People (and lawmakers) have to realize that social networks have become infrastructure, and need to be regulated to ensure openness and competition.
- davedx 13y ago
  I just signed up and was offered to hook up my Facebook account to my Diaspora account. Is this what you mean? Personally I chose not to; the reason I'm apathetic to Facebook and rarely use it these days is because of the constant privacy breaches and then the NSA news. Why sign up to an anonymous and decentralized site, only to connect it with your FB identity?
  - rglullis 13y ago
    To have a stop-gap measure against the chicken-and-egg problem. Connect it now, let your friends know that you are transitioning to this much cooler service and once a good number of them are there, then you will have enough momentum to cancel your FB account.
- 21echoes 13y ago
  Diaspora can post to FB, but pulling posts in is a much bigger kettle of fish
captainbenises 13y ago
I don't understand how you're the top rated comment, but whatever. The reason the original diaspora team didn't make a success of the diaspora project was that they were new coders. They were way out of their depth, they chose cool technologies and got burnt (mongodb -> mysql).

by dvt 13y ago

colmvp 13y ago

200k is not a lot of money, especially when competing against a multi-billion dollar company that has had a number of years head start. Furthermore, the advantage the project provided was never really clear from a laymen's perspective. My bias belief is that most people don't love Facebook but don't have a necessary reason to move elsewhere especially when a social network relies on ones social network. IMO, G+ has a prettier UI and some cooler features. But while a lot of my network has joined, few have used it again after launch. Ultimately if they were to have done it again years back, I think it would've been interesting to do a pure mobile social networking app. Again bias perspective, but I've noticed most of my online interactions with friends nowadays isn't through Facebook, e-mail, or Twitter, but through Whatsapp, Snapchat, Instagram (yes, I know Facebook bought them) and Vine.

dvt 13y ago
I don't disagree with you, but I think the media coverage was worth a lot more than the $200k -- and they received a lot of media coverage.
- roel_v 13y ago
  On nerd sites maybe. The few mentions in the mainstream press were mostly 'look how quaint, these pocket protector weirdos are building a second Facebook except that... uh... yeah just a second Facebook'.
  - dvt 13y ago
    This is just incorrect. I read articles on CNN, Huffpo, FOX News, etc. (granted, their tech sections) about it. The general sentiment was that it was supposed to be an "anti-Facebook" -- that's a very good starting point to be at, especially considering most people's general disillusionment with FB.
  - dangayle 13y ago
    NY Times is a nerd site?
saltcod 13y ago
200k isn't a lot of money for all the ambition this project had, and I don't think it really had a good shot against Facebook — outside the HN-type audience.
weego 13y ago
200k is a lot of money regardless of circumstance. And they were never actually competing against anyone, let alone Facebook. That is just naiveness on the part of people that believe that social anything is actually a software problem.

danabramov 13y ago

May I reply with a Russian proverb? “If mushrooms grew in the mouth, that would be not mouth but kitchen garden.”

copyninja 13y ago

> I wish I didn't have to use Facebook. Your wish can still come true have you tried friendica? Of course the project never got hyped at all no one gave enough money to them but It has almost all features including the federation. After proving himself ones the author of software Mike McGravin has moved on to create much more stable scalable Red# [1] http://github.com/friendica/friendica/ http://github.com/friendica/friendica/ [2] http://github.com/friendica/red http://github.com/friendica/red I always feel bad when Diaspora gets hyped and real valuable project like friendica doesn't get any credits :(

LargeWu 13y ago
Social apps are not about software features. The entire value of facebook comes from the fact that everybody else uses it.
- rogerbraun 13y ago
  That's not completely true. If it were true, nobody would use facebook because everybody already has email.
- copyninja 13y ago
  If you want people to use alternative to already existing first then the alternative should have similar+ better features. And friendica has good people base only it lacks media coverage. And my whole point was that Diaspora did nothing but got wide media coverage and people got dissatisfied but friendica has deadly feature but no media coverage

21echoes 13y ago

Diaspora was 4 (and then quickly 3, and then tragically only 2) just-out-of-college/still-in-college dudes who were tasked with building something competitive with one of the most used pieces of software of all time while inventing-brand-new / re-purposing-in-novel-ways encryption and federation technology to store and transport the data. They did amazingly well, all things considered, and the project continues along at a faster clip than most all of the flash-in-the-pan "whisper tech" / "encrypted rss" / etc stuff I see at the top of HN every day since Snowden. If just 5% of the people who bitched about Diaspora "failing" or tried to build their own competitor from scratch just contributed instead, then I think we'd be much farther along.

zalew 13y ago
> If just 5% of the people who bitched about Diaspora "failing" or tried to build their own competitor from scratch just contributed instead, then I think we'd be much farther along. What incentive does anyone have in contributing to a project that burned 200k and failed? Building something on your own with a clean slate and 100% share in the whole process from ground up is an obvious choice IMO (besides the general idea of pursuing 'the next facebook only better because orwell').
- melling 13y ago
  Hasn't this already been answered in a TED talk? http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_how_to_start_a_movement.html http://www.ted.com/talks/derek_sivers_how_to_start_a_movemen...
- rogerbraun 13y ago
  I contributed this release cycle. My incentive is that Diaspora is already a working replacement for FB or G+, but still lacks some features or has a few warts. I tried to fix one of these and it's now in the new release and Diaspora is a little better. That's how open source is supposed to work, isn't it?
  - zalew 13y ago
    > Diaspora is already a working replacement for FB or G+, but still lacks some features like people using it?

krichman 13y ago

> So I'm not worried about the NSA as much as I'm worried about Facebook or Google circumventing ethical principles in lieu of targeted advertising, using my face/name without my consent, backing up private data when I want it deleted, etc. But this is what all pragmatic people should be worried about. I highly doubt the NSA is going to care about me at any point during my lifetime (although I am a fanatic and would prefer they are unable to), but I measure the odds of Facebook misusing my information in the ways you mentioned as very high. The largest problem I have with the NSA is that it's a breach of the 4th Amendment AFAIC and I don't like the direction US law enforcement is going in general if these things are condoned. I never thought Diaspora would be successful, but I am disappointed to be right on this one so far.

dasil003 13y ago

I question whether it could have. Sure they got enough money to make it happen, but I don't think that was the hard part. The hard part is getting any kind of traction with regular people. The fact that they got money and attention makes the failure more visible and thus makes us all the more disappointed, and I think it's actually a net negative because what they were trying to do could only come from a place of traction not publicity.

captainmuon 13y ago

The only way this could take off is if they would offer federation with Facebook. I would have an account on some Diaspora server, you'd have one on Facebook, and we could post to each other's walls without restrictions. It would be really easy to hack together an interface. Diaspora would read from Facebook via the API, and post to Facebook via puppet accounts (until they get a proper federation API). Problem is that Facebook will quickly kill the app and delete your account for violating their TOS. What we really, really need is legislation that forces critical social networks (say, > one million users) to offer federation. All the technical ingredients are already there (protocols like open graph, extensions to XMPP, ...), the corporations just have to allow it. People (and lawmakers) have to realize that social networks have become infrastructure, and need to be regulated to ensure openness and competition.

davedx 13y ago
I just signed up and was offered to hook up my Facebook account to my Diaspora account. Is this what you mean? Personally I chose not to; the reason I'm apathetic to Facebook and rarely use it these days is because of the constant privacy breaches and then the NSA news. Why sign up to an anonymous and decentralized site, only to connect it with your FB identity?
- rglullis 13y ago
  To have a stop-gap measure against the chicken-and-egg problem. Connect it now, let your friends know that you are transitioning to this much cooler service and once a good number of them are there, then you will have enough momentum to cancel your FB account.
21echoes 13y ago
Diaspora can post to FB, but pulling posts in is a much bigger kettle of fish

captainbenises 13y ago

I don't understand how you're the top rated comment, but whatever. The reason the original diaspora team didn't make a success of the diaspora project was that they were new coders. They were way out of their depth, they chose cool technologies and got burnt (mongodb -> mysql).