

Diaspora's Proposed Social Media Model - mhunter
http://www.joindiaspora.com/images/Diaspora_ISOC_Presentation.pdf

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logic
I think it's important to mention that this PDF pre-dates their Kickstarter
campaign, lest anyone think this is a new architecture discussion.

I really want these guys to succeed for a variety of reasons (not the least of
which is that they were lucky enough to stumble onto a bit of buzz around the
project), but I have this fear that they're going to go hide in a room for a
few months and then release something they consider "complete" (but without
any peer review, collaborative development, or user testing), to the
collective yawn of the Internet.

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metachris
Will be interesting to follow Diaspora; I think all the publicity could
increase their chance to build something big. But I think their motto/tagline
needs a serious rework (it would already help to cut out the "do-it-all"):

"The privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all, open source social
network."

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jsiarto
Yeah, I agree. Anytime you start saying that your software can "do-it-all"
you're bound to run into problems. I still can't see how this has mass public
appeal--anyone outside the HN/tech scene isn't even going to understand 1% of
what any of that shit means.

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Avshalom
Wait, doesn't the proposed routing make it impossible to share links? If Dan
has friends Mike and Sara and mike wants to say "Hey Sara look at this photo
of the three of us" doesn't he end up pasting an invalid link because it
contains Mike's key, not Sara's?

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starnix17
There's no way a typical end user is going to know how to deploy an open-
source Ruby on Rails application.

Although I really dislike PHP, I feel like it would be more appropriate
because at least some technology enthusiasts are comfortable with uploading
some PHP files and running a web based installer even though they aren't
programmers.

Edit: It's also using MongoDB, interesting.

~~~
logic
Realistically, there's no way a typical end-user is going to deploy their own
seed at all. I suspect they know this, as suggested by the fact that they plan
to build a hosting service. (I presume that's how they're planning to monetize
this, long term?) Anything that requires active system administration or
application deployment by the end user is going to fail.

IMHO, I'd consider language/framework choice to be the least of their
concerns; they picked something they knew, and moved on to more pressing
issues.

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what
I'd be more interested to hear about what they're actually working on. Judging
by their twitter stream the only thing they've actually done is redesign their
web site. 200k well spent.

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adulau
Looks nice on paper. Where is the free software implementation?

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messel
Diaspora has mastered selling promises.

But can they build?

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stck
If this is enough details for raising $200,000 there's something seriously
wrong with investors.

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sp332
Maybe it's too risky for $200,000. How about $5? 1400 people thought it was
worth $5. Another 1000 thought it was worth $10. 2500 people - almost half the
backers - gave $25. Only 600 people (10%) gave even $50.

~~~
jokermatt999
It's also worth noting that a decent number of these donations probably came
from the whole Facebook privacy scandal and wanting to stick it to Zuckerberg.
Still, I hope they succeed.

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mdg
The farthest I go into "social networking" is Reddit and HN. That being said,
why dont they, or anyone, just glue together the popular social networks in a
portal-type page?

Flickr for photo sharing, Twitter for status updates, etc. Isn't that a
_distributed_ network? You might not own your data, but at least no third
party owns ALL your data. I am dumbfounded by the idea of seeds, and what that
is buying you. If I request a page from someone on Diaspora, whatever was in
that page is now on my pc (somewhere). It has been said many times, but if you
dont want it out there, dont put it out there (and this is why I dont do
"social networks").

Someone please correct my misunderstandings

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sp332
Something like FriendFeed? e.g. <http://friendfeed.com/leolaporte> (Facebook
bought them last year.)

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mdg
Duh, silly me.

