

Why Diaspora will win - ssclafani
http://www.downloadsquad.com/2010/05/21/why-diaspora-will-win

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jacquesm
All they need to do is to re-implement facebook (trivial, right, after all
it's already been done at least once), woo away 400M users from their direct
competitor that has very big backers, against an established network effect
(that's trivial too, shouldn't take more than two weeks, after all once you
have the first couple of million the rest will follow), they have to do all
this without _any_ privacy mess-ups or their credibility is shot (and they are
all big names in the cryptography scene so we can see that one as in the bag)
and to top it off they have to stay good friends through all this.

Really, what could possibly go wrong.

On top of that, they have decided to solve those problems in facebook that do
not really need solving, after all, if the only thing they did different was
to default all privacy settings to _do not share this_ they'd be doing just
fine.

To paint this as Diaspora vs Facebook and to suggest they will 'win' is to
make it impossible for them to succeed at any level. This just makes it
_harder_ for Diaspora because it raises the bar at which they will be
considered a success to the 'impossible to meet'.

If they attract a 100K userbase that is happy they ought to be able to call it
a success. But that's no longer an option with bullshit-titled articles like
these.

Leave them alone, support them, give them resources but don't raise that bar
any higher, please.

Writers like this are setting these kids up for failure, no matter how
successful they are.

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tansey
I see Diaspora kind of like a third-party candidate in an election (in the
US). They won't win, but it's not really about that. It's about forcing the
big guys to take a better stance on their one important issue.

~~~
potatolicious
I also see Diaspora like a third-party candidate in a US election, but in a
different way:

They won't win, they never stood a chance, and beyond a small legion of die-
hard supporters, never had any public traction with the public beyond "oh hey,
did you know what's-his-face is running?". And like most obscure third party
candidates, they will impart no significant force upon the major candidates'
policies or views.

Sorry to be a debbie downer, but I have a hard time treating seriously a team
that has no track record nor even the slightest bit of code written. Come on,
we've been around that block to many times to be fooled by this, haven't we?

Don't get me wrong, it may very well be that some agile startup will come
along and eat Facebook for lunch. Hell, it'd be great to see some real
competition in this sphere - but from everything we've seen of Diaspora,
there's no real reason to expect them to do anything but sit around, write a
bit of code (if they even get to that) and then fizzle out.

~~~
jokermatt999
Honestly, I don't think it matters who the developers are or what their coding
expertise is at this point. They were there in the right place at the right
time for the media to latch on to their story and to bring those issues into
the light. They could take the money and run away laughing at this point, and
they still will make an impact on Facebook because the media were able to
point to their business model and say "See, things could be different!". Yes,
they have ideas that have been tried and failed before, but their story is
"sexier" and better timed than those. It's not so much the people or the code,
but the position and timing.

~~~
BerislavLopac
The problem with latching on by the media is that goes away as quickly as it
comes.

The main problem with Diaspora is that they're focusing on the technology, and
on the servers. The real solution to the "Facebook problem" lies with the end
users, not with the servers, however decentralized they were.

I'm pretty sure Diaspora will produce an application. And I'm pretty sure only
a handful of early adopters will set up the servers, and it will be used by
even fewer zealots. The "real" users -- who are a majority on Facebook -- will
never switch.

And don't forget that there already is a project doing precisely what they
intend to build: <http://opensource.appleseedproject.org/>

~~~
mindcrime
And they're not the only ones:

<https://openqabal.dev.java.net/>

(disclaimer: OpenQabal is a project I started).

I'm pretty sure there are a few other projects out there as well, doing more
or less the same thing(s). If everybody working on one of these projects could
get in sync, and agree to common protocols and formats, so that they could all
interoperate, it would make it that much more likely for the federated /
decentralized approach to catch on. I'm not sure it'll happen though. Nobody
seems to really be talking about it (yet).

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gte910h
I hate that diaspora got so much money. I don't think these guys are proven
enough, nor will their solution be the one that eventually be the best. I also
_fear_ that they will screw it up and the pro-facebook crowd will declare it
dead.

~~~
jacquesm
People can give their money away as much as they want.

Why would you hate it ? Are you jealous ?

The problem is that the amount of money they received is a pittance compared
to what is needed to take on FB, and it will take a lot more than _just_
money.

They're in a dangerous zone of having high expectations and no product, it
reminds me very much of the cuil announcement, and I fear it will end more or
less the same.

edit: dear downmodders, I know that you don't like my position on this but
wishing it to be so doesn't make it so.

~~~
gte910h
I hate they got so much, because they're much less likely to succeed when they
can plan huge from the start. 150k will feel like they can do more then they
really can. Where something like 30k would inspire leanness.

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iamdave
On the one hand, I think the aspect of Diaspora-the principles of user-
controlled content (i.e. It's mine, and I use it however I want vs. It's mine,
but it's on their infrastructure) is great.

On the other hand, I think that banking the success of their product based on
the premise that "we are the anti" Facebook is dangerous, possibly lethal.
Build what people want, cater it to their wants; don't spend your campaign
time telling us what the other guy ISN'T doing.

~~~
glhaynes
Yeah, seems like Facebook is in a position to gain by making some highly
publicized moves toward assuring privacy... get that in a couple of news
cycles and people will assume it's a fixed-enough problem (whether it is or
not).

------
scrame
Why Duke Nukem Forever will win game of the year 2011.

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sz
I'm expecting Google to roll in and take over any day now. Social networking
almost overlaps with their existing turf already. I seriously doubt Buzz as it
exists now is as far as they'll go.

We're clearly moving to a more federated system and I'm not convinced that a
dorm room startup can pull off an industry unification move like this. They
don't have the traction.

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ErrantX
yeh, so this post was as bad as the other. In fact it's probably worse for
being so speculative :)

Beyond the fact this is unlikely to be the "next Facebook" there isn't a lot
we can do now except wait and see.

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StrawberryFrog
What about all the other facebook-replacement projects? Why didn't they "win"?

