
Diaspora breaks $100k and all of Kickstarter's records - adamhowell
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/196017994/diaspora-the-personally-controlled-do-it-all-distr?pos=2&ref=spotlight
======
thaumaturgy
Rats -- someone here said, "I'd be worried if I was kickstarter at this
point...", and as I went to reply to that, they deleted their comment.

But it's spot-on.

Short term, this is going to bring a lot of publicity and attention towards
kickstarter, and that will also benefit the projects on there. If you'd like
to launch something via kickstarter, _now is the time to do it_.

Because, odds are, what these guys roll out just isn't going to live up to the
$100,000+ raised for it, and when that happens, that's going to reflect badly
on kickstarter. I would guess that potential donors will be far more critical
of future kickstarter projects; the foremost question on those projects is
going to be, "Is this another Diaspora?"

The funding for this thing stopped being about getting this project off the
ground, and has started being about a protest against Facebook. There's more
than enough money in there to launch Diaspora now. People are donating now
just to moon Facebook, and that's gonna end up hurting kickstarter later.

~~~
jacquesm
It isn't over until the fat lady sings.

But if I were them I'd shut down the pledge site now, thank everyone and say
that if after the launch they feel they need more funding they'll do a second
round.

~~~
mrduncan
There really isn't any motivation to shut it down now though as far as I can
tell. It seems like they're getting money with essentially no strings attached
- might as well get it now while it's easy to get.

~~~
jacquesm
That's true. But they would come over a lot more credible (at least to me,
that may be different for others). I you've misjudged your initial funding
requirement by more than 10:1 you are already showing that you've done
something wrong, so since they've received what they said they needed the
logical next step would be to put up some proof they can deliver.

Like that expectations stay within the realm of the feasible.

On another note, this funding round is feeding off the facebook name
recognition, _not_ on the track record of these people.

Everybody loves an underdog.

~~~
anigbrowl
But Jacques, they _haven't_ misjudged their original funding requirement - at
worst, they've underestimated potential early investor/market interest in the
product they are proposing to create.

I do see two problems here.

1\. Diaspora is now awash in money - which might go to their heads or not, but
which in any case creates new, non-code responsibilities for them. $100k is
not chump change, and you can't just stick it into a petty cash box. As soon
as Kickstarter transfers it to a bank account, being greater than $10k it will
trigger an automatic report from the bank to the IRS. So before they write any
more code, the Diaspora team need to hire a lawyer and create a trust or some
other appropriate legal vehicle...might I suggest our own grellas?

2\. For Kickstarter, this raises questions of how funding is managed. Now,
most things on there offer a straight trade - send me $1 and I'll send you an
mp3 of my new song after I've bought the guitar I need, or whatever. It's a
sales contract, basically. However, it's not obvious what the terms of this
contract are - for example, their FAQ doesn't address the question of what
happens if the project owner doesn't buy the guitar but flees to Lichtenstein
instead. I'm guessing recourse and other issues are governed by the terms of
the Amazon payments agreement
(<https://payments.amazon.com/sdui/sdui/about?nodeId=6019>), but Kickstarter
need to address this upfront to avoid potential heartache, especially given
that they allow projects to solicit commitments of up to $10k. Sooner or later
some project will fail in such a way that a donor feels victimized and there
will be blowback for Kickstarter. Given the large amount of money involved
here, it would be a good idea for them to clarify the legal context in which
donations take place. I find it surprising that they don't have any stated
policy about donations exceeding the requested amount - though given the usual
difficulty faced by artists begging for money, they probably haven't had to
confront it seriously before. Most projects that overshoot their target do so
by a fraction, not multiples.

Incidentally, Kickstarter's own rules do not allow a project creator to halt
the project early, so even if Diaspora want to shut off the flow of donations,
they can't.

Disclosure: I kicked them some $ too.

~~~
jacquesm
as to 1) Yes, agreed fully, a trust is the way to go. Grellas would be
awesome.

2) Kickstarter will likely learn as much from this particular event as anybody
(including the diaspora team), they have seen their model validated in a way
that you can only dream of when you run a service like that with a ton of free
publicity to boot. If diaspora is only marginally successful that would be
enough, but they should be careful to show their independence from the
project.

I'm going to watch this very closely in the next couple of months, it is imo
the biggest story in the year to date with respect to start-up financing.

I sincerely wish those kids the best of luck, they'll need it. Their biggest
problems will be that they will be sitting on a significant sum of money and
that alone will attract all kinds of sharks, which is not good when you're a
goldfish.

I've suggested they apply to YC, that's one of the ways in which they could
get the expertise they need in order to at least make it to a launch of sorts.
They'll be in dire need of people they can trust.

------
bcardarella
This is going to be the most overhyped and underwhelming web project ever.
This entire group looks like they have vaporware written all over them.

~~~
milod
Is anyone else mildly depressed by the inequality between money raised and
reality here?

It's great that these guys are raising money, I'm all for it. They should take
what they can get. But, what about all the brilliant open source projects out
there, that people are actually enjoying and using today, not sponsored by
large organizations that accept donations from the community. I'm willing to
bet that _none_ of them have raised even close to this much money. It saddens
me that society is more willing to financially support a statement than
something actually useful and real.

Perhaps this turn of events was destined to happen eventually and these lucky
guys hit the media jackpot. I still can't be happy about it.

~~~
synnik
Is it great that these guys are raising money?

I don't know them, but if the issue is a major fundraising effort to replace
Facebook, I would think that selecting teams to implement the new system would
need some serious due diligence.

Should someone raise money? Absolutely. Is it these guys? I honestly do not
know. More information is needed...

~~~
jeebusroxors
The fact that more information is needed makes me lean towards the "no" side
of the house.

------
Emore
I wouldn't give them a dime, at this point. They don't even have a proof of
concept, and giving them more money than they ask for is certainly counter-
productive.

------
Kilimanjaro
To the naysayers, even if they don't deliver, this undoubtedly proves there is
place for a facebook competitor.

And lots of people with money to back it up.

To facebook, you just jumped the shark. Perhaps you will never die, but your
days are counted as king of the social web.

~~~
bjplink
All this proves is that a bunch of nerds got caught up in an open source
telethon and gave some money. I highly doubt anyone at Facebook gives a
damn... especially if they've watched the "pitch" video in which these guys
come off like a bunch of 18 year old goofballs.

~~~
jacquesm
Enough people are pledging different stuff besides just money to give them a
serious amount of resources to use, all it takes is for one or two experienced
systems architects from the big G, skype or some other project to hop on board
and they're going to get a lot more legs. Diasporas biggest negative asset at
this point is the egos of the founders, judging by their videos. But then
again, who wasn't cocky at 18.

They're by no means a contender right now in the eyes of the tech world, but
if I were Zuckerberg I'd take notice of what happens when you fuck people over
often enough and what kind of grass roots resistance can materialize out of
thin air.

There seems to be a limit to consumer patience when it comes to things like
this and that makes me happy.

All FB has to do to take the wind out of diaspora's sails is to announce they
got the message and that they'll default all privacy settings to 'opt-in' from
now on and apologize.

I doubt that will happen though.

~~~
tptacek
This is the second time in this thread (which I am kicking myself for reading)
that someone has intimated that Diaspora is just a couple of Google developers
away from being big.

No.

If Facebook was 2, 10, or 100 top-caliber Google engineers away from a serious
challenge, Google would already be seriously challenging Facebook. Google is a
CS-hiring force of nature.

~~~
jacquesm
Diaspora at this point in time is a signal, not a contender.

I think facebook, for the next couple of years is unassailable, but they
should definitely take note.

The facebook brand has been damaged in the last couple of weeks, and the hype
around diaspora is damaging it further.

That's the only way in which this will have effect. If they pull it off though
(even if they just ship) I'll tip my hat to them.

~~~
tptacek
You didn't address my comment at all; you just repeated the same point you've
been making everywhere else about Facebook.

~~~
jacquesm
I re-read your comment and I don't see where you pick up that diaspora is a
couple of google developers away from being big.

They are going to get more 'legs' is not the same as being big. The only thing
that I try to convey there is that if they would get a couple of high profile
people on board is that the project will gain a lot of legitimacy in the eyes
of the the press and the blogs and that will give them yet another round of
exposure.

I did not at all mean to imply that they would be 'big' because of that, there
are far too many factors against them to even give them a fighting chance. If
they play all their cards right they might be a niche player, if there is some
kind of act-of-god then they might get a lot bigger. But taking on facebook at
this stage is like taking on google or microsoft.

------
andreyf
This seems like a great opportunity for Google to "donate" some senior talent
to the project, blow this up into a fully functioning platform (optionally
backed up on Google's servers), and one-punch KO Facebook.

~~~
hyperbovine
_and one-punch KO Facebook_

Wha?

A bunch of geeks living in the echo chamber are pissed about a privacy issue,
so they all cruise over to a geeky website, and toss in $20 of their geek-
inflated disposable income, to a vaporware project whose popularity is mostly
due to politics. Meanwhile, in the time it took me to write this, ten million
people logged in to Facebook.

Methinks a little perspective is in order here.

~~~
jacquesm
Exactly. All this amounts to at this stage is a signal to facebook. A powerful
signal, absolutely. But not by any stretch of the imagination a threat.

 _If_ they deliver somewhere in the fall and _if_ it starts to draw
significant traffic and _if_ they don't have a big security breach themselves,
and _if_ there is no falling out between the four founders _then_ they might
be a contender.

But that's a lot of ifs.

~~~
rick_2047
I was just wondering is the 100k worth the powerful signal.

~~~
jacquesm
> I was just wondering is the 100k worth the powerful signal.

Don't you mean the opposite?

~~~
rick_2047
No I don't. Not many people care about there privacy (otherwise facebook would
have been bust). And even if they had pledged 200% or 300% that would have
been enough to send a strong signal but 1088% of pledging is just not right.

There could have been so much more done with the other 80k. So many other
things need money.

~~~
jacquesm
Ah, I get you now, sorry.

I don't know if it is not 'right', the signal function would have been just as
strong if they would have set their original goal at $100K and people would
have sent them that much $.

In some ways the $amount is a value that collapses a number of underlying
elements to a single number, the amount of frustration around facebook
privacy, the people that simply wish these kids luck and there are a number of
people that hate facebook enough to put up a substantial amount of $.

Which portion of that $100K ($109K already, $4500 per _hour_ right now) comes
from the 'signal' portion is hard to tell.

------
jacquesm
If they keep this up they'll cross a million bucks in the next 18 days.

I'd start to feel a little uncomfortable if I were them by now, $10K is fine,
but a million is a serious responsibility, even if it was gathered as small
change. The surprising thing to me is how many people pledge fairly large
amounts.

~~~
orblivion
I think that once the NYT article falls out of view, it'll slow down
considerably.

~~~
jacquesm
Their current funding success will generate another round of publicity, that's
already happening. Everybody loves to hate facebook so you can just about cue
the next round of blog posts and press coverage.

edit: it looks like that was on the money:

<http://news.google.com/news/search?q=diaspora+facebook>

------
Maro
Success is all about incentives. In this case, by the end the kids probably
end up with $100K-200K each. Perhaps the biggest incentive for them will be
not to be those guys who got a jackload of money from donations and never
delivered. Google remembers forever.

------
Maro
One thing I'd require in this donation model that they provide an online
"billing" statement that shows (at least roughly) what they spent the money
on.

------
TallGuyShort
Related to the whole Facebook fiasco, I just found this. I wonder how credible
it is - that information is hard to verify. Basically, Zuckerburg allegedly
IM'd his friend, and called early Facebook adopters "dumb f __ks" for trusting
him with their information.

[http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-
ims...](http://www.businessinsider.com/well-these-new-zuckerberg-ims-wont-
help-facebooks-privacy-problems-2010-5)

~~~
jacquesm
If it's true one more reason to be very wary what you put in writng, even if
it is just an IM message.

~~~
orblivion
Yeah what a dumb fk

------
joubert
What programming experience do the Diaspora guys have?

~~~
jacquesm
At their age? Not a whole lot. But then again, Zuckerberg was about that age
when he built the first version of facebook.

It's not rocketscience. The problem is, there is facebook now.

And that sets the bar pretty high. Going up against the proverbial 800 pound
gorilla makes for a great story but it will probably end in some squashed
egos. The book rights will be worth something though :)

Just like duck-duck-go isn't going to overtake google tomorrow though, they
might find a niche they can exploit.

Facebook exiles most likely.

~~~
andymoe
What they are proposing is significantly more difficult than what Facebook
initially wrote. Facebook, at one point, was just another web app with a nice
story for bootstrapping new users via the college networks. These guys are
trying to build a distributed, secure, encrypted network on which to build
social networking functionality. If they do it correctly it could be the basis
for a whole lot more. And even if they don't work it out entirely as long as
they release the source code it is a step in the right direction and others
can continue to work on it or something similar.

~~~
jacquesm
Yes, but if they hire say cperciva or someone with credentials and experience
like that I can see that part as 'solvable'.

The technology is doable, after all, skype was built by two guys on top of a
library created to distribute mp3s.

If you look at the top of the pledge page they write "Decentralize the web",
they do not specifically mention facebook, so they seem to be aware of the
fact that this could be the basis for a whole lot more.

------
jgrahamc
Colour me unimpressed. Show me the code!

------
adamhowell
Source for "and all of Kickstarter's records" bit:

<http://twitter.com/waxpancake/status/13922920432>

------
ashnyc
I am happy they are getting this much money, but what is more interesting is
to find out who is behind these guys. Who had the connection to the NYtimes,
why did the story get picked up. They went from 0 to 3,000 followers in 1 day
on twitter. <http://twitter.com/joindiaspora> I have done some analysis
kickstarter fundraisers, and why some fundraisers go viral and others don't.
here is a quick example, same subject but only one was able to raise money
<http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/search?term=obama>

------
UnknownSource
I was personally going to donate to this project, but unfortunately, there
seems to be little evidence that these guys actually are competent coders (not
even code samples from their uni). So I fear that people are paying money
simply because they hate Facebook, and that it may be mostly wasted.

I'd love to see this happen, but I do feel that there is a high risk that the
end product may be garbage. So I urge people who want to donate to learn more
about the boys first (a computer science degree doesn't necessarily guarantee
that they even know basics such as proper multithreading or have ever touched
sockets).

------
orblivion
I'm all excited about this too, but does anybody even know these kids? Is
anybody out there vouching for so much as their ability to program? 10k is a
nice thing to risk at them, but 100k is pushing it in my opinion. 100k towards
"a decentralized social network" sounds good, but 100k towards one particular
decentralized social network sounds like trouble. At least it'll be open
source so somebody else can take it and fix it if they screw up.

On the other hand, perhaps this money is useful for the market signal in
itself, that this sort of thing is in demand.

------
DLarsen
While I haven't followed this story all that closely, what makes people so
confident that _this_ particular project will have legs?

From a quick glance at the description of their effort, I wonder whether this
will really be viable. My mom doesn't use FB for any other reason than that
it's the most convenient way to send messages and pictures to friends. For her
to move to anything else, it has to be easier. Try explaining to your mother-
in-law that she needs to install a node.

~~~
Kilimanjaro
You don't have to "install" a node. You just use one provided by wordpress,
posterous, tumblr, et al.

If you are a geek, then you roll your own.

------
dfj225
I'll be interested to see if, by the end of the summer, they have a working
project and the turn-key hosting solution.

If they get this working, it'll be interesting to see what the adoption rates
are. There might be some people with cash interested in using software such as
this, but it still doesn't seem to have a draw beyond those with a deep
knowledge of tech.

For instance, I'd wager that most Facebook users don't know what GPG is or
care if it is being used or not.

------
khangtoh
With 10K , we hope to see something, with 100K, we expect to see something,
with 1M, we better damn well get something.

------
jasongullickson
This has reinvigorated my interest in Kickstarter. I lost interest when I
wasn't able to set a high enough goal (some sort of field validation bug) for
my first attempt to post a project.

Maybe I'll try something less ambitious this time around?

------
pclark
I doubt this will hurt Facebook. I don't believe regular users on the whole
care about privacy. Especially if you compare the value of Facebook (all my
friends, photos, events, chat) vs privacy cost.

One interesting implementation they could strive for is rather than expecting
users to host their own server, ask them for an AWS key and use that - that
way Amazon handles all billing, uptime, etc.

Also the name blows, and they're self professed nerds - generally terrible at
making a user experience for regular users.

------
chegra
I see a lot of people worry about if they fail. I think in the community there
are a lot of people here to make it a success, and I think at this point that
showing a little opportunism would be good right now. Identify ways you can
help that can create a win-win for both you and diaspora. Don't say you miss
the party for this one.

------
zach
I'm entertaining myself with the notion that a great deal of this money is
from Zuck himself, funneled in via small amounts in a fiendish Xanatos
Gambit[1] to make the inevitable flameout more spectacular.

1 - <http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/XanatosGambit>

------
loup-vaillant
Do someone know why they chose the name "Diaspora"? As far as I know, this
word is heavily connoted, and may needlessly hurt some feelings. Would a more
neutral name be fitter?

Also, could the name be changed at all, given the attention it already
received?

------
charlesdm
They went from 10K to 100k, and they're probably going to end up with even
more massive amount of money in the end. I'm really interested in seeing what
they're going to deliver.

------
MikeCapone
Too much hype and money can be dangerous. It reminds me of Cuil...

------
QNguyen
So I'm wondering - should they keep this a summer project or just take a leave
of absence from school and give this project their full attention?

100k is some serious seed money.

~~~
SkyMarshal
Leave of absence I'd say. 3months may be enough to build the basic
infrastructure before turning it over to the open source community, but the
odds of Diaspora succeeding in the long run will be significantly better if
its guided by the people who created and live it as long as possible. Thinking
of Linux as the model.

------
jonursenbach
I can't help but wonder how much of the money raised for these guys is going
to be spent on the rewards promised.

------
PhrosTT
the upshot to all this publicity is they'll get some competent advisors since
they're now over their head for college frosh.

also they should probably take a year off and move somewhere other than NYC
(unless proximity to help is worth the rent).

------
pkulak
Have these guys updated their plans now to reflect the new funding?

------
stuntmouse
$100,383 @ 10:02 AM PST.

------
mkramlich
What I don't understand about Diaspora is why can't one guy just start hacking
out his own "distributed Facebook" replacement today. No team needed (not at
start.) No money needed. Use F/OS/OTS software, all the pieces are just laying
there. Actually I wouldn't be surprised if there were already several people
out there doing _exactly_ this already, but without the PR splash made by
Diaspora.

Ok, maybe I've just answered my own question. It's only about the PR splash!

~~~
neurotech1
The money requested ($10,000) was intended as a summer sipend. I doubt that a
single programmer can write the code in 3 months, while paying the bills.

In other words, $10,000 means they can work on this all summer without needing
a job to support them.

------
papachito
Their github repositories are unimpressive to say the least
<http://github.com/danielgrippi> <http://github.com/rsofaer>
<http://github.com/maxwell>

Judging by their open source activities, they are not people I'd give $100k
to.

I've seen much more impressive repositories from students.

------
rick_2047
I have said it before[1] and I will say it again, this is obscene amount of
money for something that not a thing that a very big portion of web is going
to use and is not a profit generating startup.

[1]<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1343399>

------
clistctrl
They're starting to look at some serious cash. I hope these kids use it
wisely. A reasonable amount should be used for living expenses, but there's
enough left over to hire a good quality graphics designer, and other
contractors to help with the load.

