
Diaspora team takes on Eben Moglen as informal advisor - jacquesm
http://www.wired.com/epicenter/2010/05/facebook-open-alternative/
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nfnaaron
"Laurent Eschenauer, one of the OneSocialWeb developers, says his project and
Diaspora share the goal of providing a “free, open and decentralized
alternative to the social networking silos that are Facebook and Twitter.” He
says he hopes that Diaspora looks to work cooperatively with his project,
rather than “reinventing the wheel."

...

"Both OneSocialWeb and Appleseed share the same problem: getting enough users
to make users want to sign up — the so-called network effect where a network
gets exponentially more useful as it gets bigger. (Think of the fax machine as
an example — two fax machines in the world aren’t very useful, but your fax
machine becomes much more useful when there are 1,000 of them, and even more
valuable when there are 10 million.)"

...

"Users don’t have to choose to stop using Facebook or Twitter and will be able
use the Diaspora client to use those all those services in one place — much
like Friendfeed currently does. But when Diaspora knows that the person you
are trying to communicate with also has Diaspora, it will use peer-to-peer,
encrypted methods to send that message. And as more and more people start
using the free software, they’ll slowly find themselves weaned from for-profit
services, according to Moglen."

I think if the various social networks coming up interoperated, on some
significant set of features, it would be good for all of them and all of us.

If service A has Ua users then the value of A is Ua^2 (or whatever). If B has
Ub its value is Ub^2. If they interoperate then the value of both approach
(Ua+Ub)^2. E.g. 3^2 = 9 and 4^2 = 16, or (3+4)^2 = 49. As service A adds
users, services A and B both enjoy an increase in the value of their networks.

Edit: math notation.

~~~
nopinsight
I have long doubted the validity of this "Metcalfe's Law", which "states that
the value of a telecommunications network is proportional to the square of the
number of connected users of the system (n2)".
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metcalfe%27s_law>

Generally the people in your social group is much more likely to belong to the
same telecommunication system as you do. And you don't care nearly as much
otherwise. Someone in Nepal will care a lot less when Facebook gains 100,000
more users in Italy than when those new users are in Nepal itself.

We can make a much better approximation of the real usefulness of the network
by individualizing the law to each user, i.e. "...the square of the number of
connected users of the system (n2) _in your relevant social group_."

Notice that since an individual has "cognitive limit to the number of people
with whom one can maintain stable social relationships", this modified law
also place a much sharper limit on a network's usefulness by Dunbar's number.
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number>

~~~
lzimm
Totally agree. People always seem to forget how simple people are.

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jacquesm
Near the bottom of the article: "Diaspora is taking a different tack,
according to Moglen, who has taken the students on as clients and is
informally advising them."

