5 ms·

> For sake of comparison, it takes Twitter roughly 10 minutes to accumulate that many Tweets. That is not a fair comparison at all. You could as well compare t

by eellpp 11y ago

> For sake of comparison, it takes Twitter roughly 10 minutes to accumulate that many Tweets. That is not a fair comparison at all. You could as well compare twitter to number of google queries (or number of some other number that dwarfs it). It should also not be compared against early stage of facebook as well (a private enterprise with slush funds for marketing , pr, buzz and developers). May be compare it against the early stage of popular GNU tools or other free/open source community projects that are dealing with tough problems to crack. Given the nature of problem involved, diaspora may be the first step to the next few steps in realising the goal of distributed social network. It needs to be pursued to that end.

dredmorbius 11y ago
It's more than fair. Diaspora's been up and active for years -- it launched in November, 2010. Let's say that a Tweet conveys only 1/1000th the meaning or significance of a Diaspora post. You're still looking at the fact that the lifetime volume of Diaspora is a week's worth of Twitter traffic. I'm on Diaspora. Been there for years. Hardly use it, for a number of reasons -- chief among them that there's very little of interest for me there, no search, and I keep seeing content from idiots I'd really prefer not to deal with. I've got enough noise in my life. I'm also active on Ello, which, similarly, has quite a small (though enthusiastic) community. And G+.One criticism which applies equally well to each of these networks is that it's insanity to go up against Facebook on the social graph. Facebook owns that graph, to the tune of 2.5 billion people, a large portion of whom are monthly actives. Google has 2.2 billion profiles but cannot convince more than 0.27% to participate with public posts monthly. Now, a fraction of a percent of 2.2 billion is still a large number, about 6 million users. But it's a small fraction of Facebook's activity. The alternative is to pursue the interest graph. That's effectively what HN does (startups / tech interests), reddit (multiple subreddits), Pinterest (it's in the name), etc. See Michel E. Pearl's critique of Ello: https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/s-IsrNuI5ODCJqnUJ8KoEA https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/s-IsrNuI5ODCJqnUJ8KoEA Another is to consider social networking from the "problems solved" perspective. A shockingly large part of that is : 1. Where can I post my photos online? Kids love this, yes, but parents and grandparents even more. 2. How can I post updates and content online. Effectively microblogging. Sometimes more than micro. 3. Spam and access controls. Not everything I post need be commented on by everyone, or even be visible to them. From the ground up, HTML and HTTP make all of this difficult, and tools for mitigating spam, trolls, cross-scripting attacks, and other abuse are actually an underappreciated aspect of centrally-provided services. 4. Promotion. I recently discovered that there's actually a tremendous amount of activity and discussion on Wordpress, as compared to G+, Facebook, or reddit. But it's hard to get engagement on blogs. If blogs can sort out how to provide content recommendations and engagement, and the authentication / reputation issue for comments, they'll take away much of the benefit of social networking sites.
- eellpp 11y ago
  > 4. Promotion. I recently discovered that ... Thats interesting way to look at it. Technology trends go in cycles where initially the solution is centered around single service/device (monolithic service) and slowly it decentralises into niches that solve the problems better in ways. Then again the technology changes drastically and a new monolithic/centric solution appears. The trend in blogging had been towards better UI and presentation. But instead the focus should be on engagement to drive the conversation.
  - dredmorbius 11y ago
    The trend in blogging had been towards better UI and presentation. But instead the focus should be on engagement to drive the conversation. Very much that, IMO.

by eellpp 11y ago

dredmorbius 11y ago

It's more than fair. Diaspora's been up and active for years -- it launched in November, 2010. Let's say that a Tweet conveys only 1/1000th the meaning or significance of a Diaspora post. You're still looking at the fact that the lifetime volume of Diaspora is a week's worth of Twitter traffic. I'm on Diaspora. Been there for years. Hardly use it, for a number of reasons -- chief among them that there's very little of interest for me there, no search, and I keep seeing content from idiots I'd really prefer not to deal with. I've got enough noise in my life. I'm also active on Ello, which, similarly, has quite a small (though enthusiastic) community. And G+.One criticism which applies equally well to each of these networks is that it's insanity to go up against Facebook on the social graph. Facebook owns that graph, to the tune of 2.5 billion people, a large portion of whom are monthly actives. Google has 2.2 billion profiles but cannot convince more than 0.27% to participate with public posts monthly. Now, a fraction of a percent of 2.2 billion is still a large number, about 6 million users. But it's a small fraction of Facebook's activity. The alternative is to pursue the interest graph. That's effectively what HN does (startups / tech interests), reddit (multiple subreddits), Pinterest (it's in the name), etc. See Michel E. Pearl's critique of Ello: https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/s-IsrNuI5ODCJqnUJ8KoEA https://ello.co/dredmorbius/post/s-IsrNuI5ODCJqnUJ8KoEA Another is to consider social networking from the "problems solved" perspective. A shockingly large part of that is : 1. Where can I post my photos online? Kids love this, yes, but parents and grandparents even more. 2. How can I post updates and content online. Effectively microblogging. Sometimes more than micro. 3. Spam and access controls. Not everything I post need be commented on by everyone, or even be visible to them. From the ground up, HTML and HTTP make all of this difficult, and tools for mitigating spam, trolls, cross-scripting attacks, and other abuse are actually an underappreciated aspect of centrally-provided services. 4. Promotion. I recently discovered that there's actually a tremendous amount of activity and discussion on Wordpress, as compared to G+, Facebook, or reddit. But it's hard to get engagement on blogs. If blogs can sort out how to provide content recommendations and engagement, and the authentication / reputation issue for comments, they'll take away much of the benefit of social networking sites.

eellpp 11y ago
> 4. Promotion. I recently discovered that ... Thats interesting way to look at it. Technology trends go in cycles where initially the solution is centered around single service/device (monolithic service) and slowly it decentralises into niches that solve the problems better in ways. Then again the technology changes drastically and a new monolithic/centric solution appears. The trend in blogging had been towards better UI and presentation. But instead the focus should be on engagement to drive the conversation.
- dredmorbius 11y ago
  The trend in blogging had been towards better UI and presentation. But instead the focus should be on engagement to drive the conversation. Very much that, IMO.