
Diaspora: An Overdue Update - seancron
http://www.joindiaspora.com/2010/08/26/overdue-update.html
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jlgbecom
Appleseed is a lot farther along, and has been releasing steadily this whole
summer. It's years ahead of Diaspora, they've been putting out a new release
every month, and they already have a bunch of nodes already running their
software.

<http://opensource.appleseedproject.org>

I think by the time Sep 15th rolls around, Appleseed will be on it's fourth
release this summer.

~~~
postfuturist
A quick glance at Appleseed's SVN repo and I see the code base is PHP, like
GNU social. It's maybe not a terrible decision, but it deters me (as a
developer who sometimes deals with PHP at my day job) from any interest in
looking any closer or wanting to risk installing it on my server.

~~~
jlgbecom
A lot of the biggest sites on the web are coded in PHP, including Facebook,
Wikipedia, and Digg.

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danieldon
We know and so what?

Not only is it in a language that many hackers dislike, but it's a supposedly
_decentralized_ social app in a _centralized_ (and, in this context, archaic)
SVN repo.

~~~
nir
Judging by the amount of open source PHP code out there, some of it powering
major websites, I'm not sure at all it's "a language many hackers dislike".

~~~
danieldon
It's pretty universally acknowledged, even among PHP developers, that the
language is a mess. There are reasons to use it despite this, but don't try to
pretend it's something it isn't.

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pvg
So, took some UI classes, ate some bagels, gave some talks, met some
interesting people, off to Burning Man. All wonderful things but none of them
actually say or show much about what they have got implemented and working.

~~~
thaumaturgy
That's a pretty horrible way to summarize someone's efforts. I'll resist the
urge to describe pinboard.in the same way.

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pvg
_I'll resist the urge to describe pinboard.in the same way._

We're always delighted to receive feedback!

~~~
j2d2
Head's up: You probably shouldn't have a testimonial from a guy who hasn't
used your site in months (Prakash)

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pvg
Heads up: you probably don't know what you're talking about. But if you're
curious, ask the user yourself if you happen to know him.

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j2d2
Why the condescension? The user's name is clickable and his profile shows he
hasn't used the site since March. Instead of being rude, perhaps consider why
his experience wasn't sticky.

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wolfrom
I really hope their API will come soon; I think the best chance they have of
user adoption will be based on the creativity of API developers bridging the
gaps between Diaspora and other services. If users can communicate between
Diaspora nodes and other social networks, at least on a basic level, they
could see enough migration to make their efforts worthwhile.

~~~
icarus_drowning
I too think this will be key. If I can "remote control" Facebook through
Diaspora, I will switch in a heartbeat. If I can't experience the same level
of interaction as Facebook with the same number of people, I'll still probably
switch, but gradually stop using it, I'm sure.

~~~
jeebusroxors
What is the point of that? I'm not into the whole social network thing but
isn't the point of Diaspora to be able to control your own "private"
information? If you post to Facebook from Diaspora wouldn't you be giving up
the only real reason to switch?

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v21
I don't see why. While everyone you want to talk to is on Facebook you talk
Facebook. When a group of friends you want to privately share with is largely
on Diaspora, you use Diaspora. Diaspora's focus on making setting privacy
levels unthinkingly sounds like it'd be a real useful thing to have hooked
into Facebook [for people who give a shit about privacy, but not enough to
fight Facebook settings afresh each post].

Embrace, extend and ...

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starnix17
I know most people always comment on how the Diaspora project is destined to
fail, and they're probably right.

However, there's no denying how awesome it is that a few college kids can
raise over $100,000 like this to build their project.

Even if the project fails like most people say, I imagine it will be a
positive experience for the four guys that worked on it.

~~~
jlgosse
If Diaspora fails, it will have less to do with the awesomeness of the
project, and more to do with the lack of everyone's friends actually using
Diaspora.

I figure it will be a huge hit among geeks like us, but then will fall out of
usage due to the lack of updates from people that matter, like friends and
family.

I use Facebook for staying in touch with the mostly non-technical people in my
life who actually use Facebook, and that's what will end up swaying most users
(like myself) back towards Facebook in a relatively short period of time.

~~~
troyk
Non techie friends and family pay a lot of attention to what techie guy does.
I remember using google when everyone else was using yahoo, and soon all my
friends and family started to use google over yahoo. In 2006, I switched to
mac. Half my non-techie friends and family now have macs. Trends, possibly,
but they'll try it if they know you like it and if it is better, they are
sold.

~~~
StavrosK
Both of your examples have no network effects, which is why it's very easy for
people to switch. Try switching to a different IM, for example.

You won't switch if you don't have anyone to talk to on it, and you won't have
anyone to talk to on it if you don't switch.

Google Talk and its Gmail integration did wonders for Jabber, thankfully.

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peterbraden
They don't seem to get open source. Open source is having code available so
people can contribute and review, not simply dumping some files at a specified
date.

~~~
boucher
Sometimes that's true. Sometimes the right approach for a project still just
getting off the ground is not letting people in for a while.

It's easier to realize a vision when you've already got something concrete to
point to. Otherwise you often waste time arguing over what color to paint the
shed.

~~~
blantonl
Sometimes there is another team out there that knows a better method to
determining what color to paint the shed. As an open source developer, you are
more than welcome to disregard feedback regarding your code provided it is
publicly available, but when you don't make it available, how can it be called
open source?

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Unseelie
It can't be. Until they make it available. Hence the verb usage of Open-
sourced, an action they intend to do to the project. That is, they intend to
change it from closed, and very private, to open.

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quizbiz
Why is their logo an asterisk when it seems their whole idea is that they are
the social network without a catch? The asterick at the end of their name
instantly makes me want to scroll down to read the fine print.

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3pt14159
I always thought it was intended as a "all" symbol. All your privacy, all the
control, all these different apps plugging in.

SELECT * FROM user_preferences; -- type thing

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Unseelie
Blow a seeding dandelion, and you get diaspora. Which is why the dandelion is
their logo, and the asterisk is a very close approximation of that form

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pkulak
I still choose to be optimistic. Not getting my hopes up, but I'm still
excited to see what they come up with.

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tswicegood
It's sad that they didn't just tack onto an existing project like Pinax and
add functionality to it to handle the federated system. There was no need to
reinvent the wheel, the existing ones just needed a little truing.

~~~
jacquesm
Anything but pinax, please...

I had a really good look at that and I did not like much what I saw (that was
a while ago, but still). Do you have a specific reason for suggesting that
over appleseed (mentioned elsewhere in this thread), which I think would be a
far better fit?

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pclark
Wow, spending $10k on UX this early seems like an interesting move

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SoftwareMaven
That, IMO, is one of the best things they could spend the money on. This
project is going to suffer from being a technologists dream toy. By bringing
in outside help to focus on who the end-user is, they have a hope of
overcoming this and making it usable for mortals.

UX should be the first dollars spent on a consumer product, not the last.

~~~
pbhjpbhj
The demise of Google Wave must have been a hard story for them to read.

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vegashacker
What do they mean by, "Since the 1st of August is nearly over..."?

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naner
Sarcasm. They probably promised an update on the 1st of August.

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pepijndevos
One might argue that all those other OStatus network are way ahead, but I
never read _their_ updates on HN, so Diaspora has at least a lot of buzz
around it and thus the potential to get a user base faster than all the
others.

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paulnelligan
Personally, I'd really like to see a way of giving people the ability to share
eachothers posts on diaspora (with posters consent of course). Metrics for
posts could then be measured and displayed, and a whole new golden age of
blogging/microblogging/online-publishing could be born out of this.

Also, there's got to be a better way of connecting people of similar interests
via groups than the current model.

Also also, please consider musicians in the melée!!

god speed diaspora. I for one will be joining asap.

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vzmind
I just clearly support you guys. impatient to read your code and share the
good parole in my countries (Farnce-Chile-India).. Your tools, partners and
tech choices rock !! Ruby, MongoDB; Github, Pivotal. They give a clear view on
what you do and how you work. I am also impatient to see what is that
wonderful bot and how do you guys will handle propagation of seeds. Let's work
!!.

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GBKS
Great to hear that they have a solid team of advisors and that they are
putting the user experience first. With open-source I am always a bit
concerned that design and experience are secondary. Diaspora has a great story
going on right now, I hope the product will continue that with the same spirit
and capture people's imaginations.

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thisorthat
Sadly I don't think this will take off. So many people rallied over Diaspora
calling it the Facebook killer not understanding the true implications. Maybe
I am wrong about this but wouldn't the people that want to use this have to
download it and host it themselves?

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famousactress
I worry. The whole update reminded me of when I move out of an apartment and
think I've got one more load to go at 9pm... Just a few lamps and the vacuum.
Three loads and four hours later and I'm still almost done.

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lotusleaf1987
Why don't they use a sans serif font? Sans serif fonts are just more legible
and easier to read.

~~~
reneherse
Careful youngin, don't equate conformity with professionalism. The text is
quite legible and the serif font makes a nice counterpoint to the rest of the
page.

~~~
lotusleaf1987
It's just not consistent since other parts of the page are in sans serif. I
just prefer sans serif, I guess. Serif fonts remind me of cursive. Sans serif
fonts seem more objective. For example, when you write "dog" you don't
necessarily want the word to look like a dog.

~~~
ugh
Nearly all available evidence suggests that whether the font has serifs or not
makes no difference with respect to readability on the screen.

That you think of sans-serif as more objective is actually quite funny.
Newspapers, books and magazines – i.e. pretty much everything we read until a
few years ago – used nearly exclusively a serif font for all their body text.
Now it’s serif that sticks out.

