

Diaspora — Share the love. - citricsquid
http://blog.diasporafoundation.org/2011/10/12/we-love-you.html?

======
tptacek
The Diaspora team published their financials awhile back. They weren't insane;
they spent on some stuff I thought was silly, but they also paid themselves a
pittance. The easy snark to supply here would be to say "what happened to the
$200k", but that's easy to shoot down.

The reason you shouldn't give these people money is that they are very
unlikely to succeed, and none of their published strategy makes a particularly
compelling case for how this tiny team is going to make a dent in a space that
Google and Apple are having trouble securing traction in.

One could make the observation that Diaspora is clearly a labor of love, and
that to the extent that it is going to be important, it's going to be
important with or without your money.

~~~
rkalla
I think the lack of delivered milestones and need for more money indicates
that this team with the current vision will likely _always_ need more money to
deliver "the vision".

I think of the group that got pissed off at the Twitter client announcement
months back and went out and built <http://rstat.us> in a weekend (a very
rough deployed prototype).

Since then they have been hacking on it making it nicer and nicer to use. It
is actually a really compelling replacement for Twitter; just without your
social circles yet.

A project like Diaspora, with the charter that it has "take on Facebook" is
too big to try and fund without a benevolent dictator at the helm, executing a
singular vision.

That project either needs to be driven by the community as an open source
project (again, with a singular dictator driving it) or it needs to be rolled
up into a tight company vision with a first round of funding to get a
deployment up and running with a wall, photos and messages and then move on
from there.

I was annoyed to see the lack of updates on their product page and so many
annoyed/angry donatees pissed off with the lack of updates.

More money isn't going to fix this. I am almost certain I could give them
$500k and in a year and a half be here again with a rewritten back end and a
request for "just a little more funding".

~~~
thristian
Ooh, rstat.us implements the OStatus protocol, so it interoperates with
identi.ca. Good stuff!

The latest status.net release (the software behind identi.ca) looks an awful
lot like Google+ or facebook, as opposed to previous versions' more specific
Twitter-targeted style. After the #nymwars debacle on G+, I'm thinking perhaps
identi.ca is the place to be, after all.

------
pork
Share the love?? Good god, children, please give me more to go on than that.
Where will my hard-earned money go to? Given your code output, I'd rather my
cash didn't end up feeding you guys -- plenty of people work day jobs while
working on their startup dreams, and there's no reason why you four can't.

Please, please -- never ask for money without delivering something that people
feel is worth paying for. It might bring you in a few bucks now, but you are
likely to lose goodwill and build an image of desperation.

Take my advice -- find real jobs, and let the community build Diaspora* by
itself if it wants to. I don't mean to be harsh, but your skills are not
essential to the project. Know when to cut loose -- you can still be involved
with your beloved codebase, but for heaven's sake, get a real job before you
all starve!

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gatlin
I have yet to figure out how Diaspora couldn't reliably, quickly, and cheaply
be implemented on top of XMPP (with maybe a protocol extension for rich
profiles).

It's ultimately about delivering bits over the network and we have solved that
problem and implemented our solution in free software already.

XMPP allows for friends, distributed registration, link-local access, basic
profiles, broadcasts, multimedia, and extensibility to add app-specific
goodies.

Diaspora only serves to acknowledge that Facebook is necessary, when what we
should be doing is using existing tech to show it isn't.

~~~
commandar
This is the reason why I could never understand why Google seemed intent on
promoting Wave as a fancier version of email or why they focused so much on
the tech demo UI.

Under the hood, Wave was a federated XMPP network with privacy controls and
the ability to move arbitrary data around. It had all the underpinnings not of
an email killer, but of a distributed social network.

I was really excited about the potential of the project at the time, and came
to be incredibly disheartened by the way nobody seemed to realize that the
fancy placeholder UI wasn't where the actual interesting technology was.

ETA:

OneSocialWeb was another project predating Diaspora that was a distributed
social network built on top of XMPP:

<http://onesocialweb.org/developers-xmpp.html>

~~~
gatlin
If only the marketing of Diaspora could have been combined with the technical
details of OneSocialWeb.

Facebook is great because it "gets" what average folks want and need. It being
centralized is a _huge_ boon and while a few folks bitch about their privacy,
very few people actually care. That isn't to say privacy concerns aren't
legitimate - they are - but I know most of my peers just want to see pictures
and read up on the latest news. Facebook is dead simple to use, requires
nothing to get started, and has inertia. It won.

Many people on this site idolize Steve Jobs, so do what he would do:

1\. Acknowledge that Facebook won its game 2\. Start playing a different game.

You're spot on about Wave. Wave had the potential to be the next wave of
communication (ugh), and they set their sights on probably the one standard
that will never be disrupted, instead of trying to disrupt a relatively new
segment. Wave should have been a social collaboration platform. I know that
all I use Facebook for is communicating with members of my co-op, and we all
could have easily moved our house business over. Instead, they blew it and we
use Facebook for organization, scheduling, and collaboration.

------
bebop
Wow, hacker news whats up? This is a cool project that despite all the "what
do they have to show for it" comments, has a real product. I know because I
signed up on this pod: <https://diasp.org/> have any of you tried it? Seems
like it works like other social networking sites, but unlike fb/g+, is open
source and trying to be privacy aware.

If you don't want to give them money because you think they wasted 200K that's
fine, don't do it. Really though there is a product and it seems to be working
fine. Lets help them gain traction instead of bad mouthing innovators. I feel
like hacker news should really support this type of product, but for some
reason everyone here loves to hate it.

If you have technical concerns, that's fine, but lets help them not hinder the
community with negativity. An open source facebook is exactly what the world
needs now.

~~~
guelo
I don't think I've ever seen an open source project so roundly criticized for
every little move they make. If people don't want to give them money then
don't give them money, what's the point of all the hate?

~~~
tedunangst
I don't think I've ever seen an open source project so loudly pronounce what
it was going to do before it did anything at all. (Not since okopipi promised
to replace blue frog, anyway. Who remembers that? open source! peer to peer!
how can it fail?!) Live by the buzz, die by the buzz.

~~~
Joeboy
I do. Surely the problem there was the non-appearance of any product, not the
initial hype? Diaspora _has_ a product.

Also as I recall Okopipi failed to materialise because somehow it had lots of
enthusiasts, but nobody actually working on it. You can see work happening on
diaspora on github, by the four full time coders and many others.

~~~
tedunangst
I think right about now would have been a great time for Diaspora to announce
their _first_ call for donations. "Hey look, we've got this great product and
just need a little time and money to finish it off."

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darksaga
You, I really had high hopes for this product. I signed up for the updates,
waited patiently for my invite, and held out this could be a really good
product. After several months of little or no updates or an invite, I lost
track.

The one thing this project failed to do was capitalise on their new found
popularity. Instead of seeing dollar signs, they should have holed up and did
as many 24 hour hackfests as they could to get this puppy up in a few weeks -
ready or not for prime time and tinker on it after that.

Instead, they ran out of money, their support has dried up, and their window
to get this released, closed long ago. Not to mention, they've let a bunch
more competitors into their space, namely Google.

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wickedchicken
On their site they claim 'Diaspora* is already in the top 2% of all open
source projects ever.'

Kind of curious where they got these stats: All of the BSDs, the Linux kernel,
all of the GNU project (gcc, GNOME, coreutils...), X11, Vim, Valgrind, LLVM,
the list goes on of open source projects I think are slightly more popular.

Then again, if the number of projects is in the millions, the top 2% would
place it in the top 20,000...

~~~
tedunangst
There are a lot of 10 line perl scripts on sourceforge.

------
asianexpress
Diaspora asking for donations? What happened to the $200k and where is this
new money going?

Then again...NY can be an expensive place to start a company

~~~
adgar
They got 178k after fees/taxes. Then, they had to spend 28k on Kickstarter's
"fulfillment" requirements. So they had 150 to actually work with.

They spent $114k on salaries, taxes, workers comp, etc.

8.5k on hosting and whatnot - how on earth are they using that the resources
to justify that?!

8k on LUXr training. 2.5k on "Diaspora graphics/printing." Probably a waste,
but you gotta spend the budget somehow, I guess.

14k on housing and travel... curious.

So the 200k turned into 114k in their pockets, 14k of hotels/flights/etc, some
training and a bunch of wasted hardware.

Yeah, 29k is poverty, especially in NYC, but these are NYU students. There's
plenty of financial aid to go around, but in reality, it's an overwhelmingly
wealthy college. I'd be _extremely_ surprised if their parents weren't already
paying their rent/living expenses. And despite pocketing 76% of the cash, they
don't have anything to show for it, and nobody's really believed they had a
shot since that code release a year ago that showed they had no real technical
skills to back up the project. Which probably explains the huge expenses for
idle servers. I don't doubt their dedication or belief in themselves or the
project, but for the love of god, stop indulging this fantasy.

~~~
commandar
>nobody's really believed they had a shot since that code release a year ago
that showed they had no real technical skills to back up the project.

I really have no idea why people thought the project had a serious shot in the
first place. From the get go they were talking up hugely ambitious features
like video-chat while never explaining how they intended to deal with the core
architecture of the project.

Simple fact of the matter is that they happened to announce when being pissed
at Facebook was a common sentiment, and people expressed their anger by
throwing money at these kids. It really didn't take more than a cursory look
to see that the chances of something worthwhile being built, let alone taking
off, were minimal.

~~~
adgar
I don't disagree. I certainly didn't throw them any money. But after that code
release, even the most desperate facebook-hater knew Diaspora was nothing but
well-intentioned vapor.

~~~
Joeboy
> nothing but well-intentioned vapor.

Why do people keep saying this? It exists. You can use it.

------
TomGullen
I don't want to donate money into what's probably going to turn into a giant
hole. Diaspora had its opportunity but now it's just going to fade away into
obscurity I think. I'd like to be proved wrong but I'm no way near believing
in it enough to give them money.

They don't tell us how much money they need either. Or what it will be spent
on. The stuff about me warmly hugging them or whatever and me being awesome
comes off in a sort of weird corporate faux caring sort of way.

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notatoad
i think its time we admitted that nobody wants a facebook clone. it doesn't
matter how distributed it is, how open it is, how shiny it is, or anything
else. nobody is going to replace facebook with a product that is essentially
facebook. if google can't do it, a couple kids aren't going to do it either.

the next social networking phenomenon will be something new, not a new
implementation of something old, and it's time to stop trying to re-invent old
things.

~~~
wmf
Looking at the screenshots I'd say Diaspora is now a Google+ clone.

~~~
glassx
Not really. Diaspora already had most of its design in place, including the
drag-and-drop 'Circles' feature (called Aspects in Diaspora), before Google+
was even announced.

~~~
libraryatnight
Yes, exactly. Many Diaspora users were posting about Google+ ripping them off.

~~~
michaelchisari
Which is pretty ridiculous, since Appleseed had circles since 2007, and I know
Diaspora was aware of Appleseed before they released any code. Also, I spoke
with someone from Google about Appleseed's circles two months before Diaspora
even released any code.

Not that I'm claiming that Google+ stole Appleseed's idea for circles, since
they put out a presentation in June 2010 talking about social segmentation
from a theoretical perspective, and even if they did, it wouldn't raise much
ire, since I stole the idea from Livejournal's friends list, which it had
since, what, 2000?

There was a lot of precedence for groupings of social relationships, and
honestly, I was shocked at the hubris of the Diaspora* team to claim that
Google had pilfered them for inspiration.

------
angryasian
i've seen companies do a lot more with a lot less. I don't care if its NY, SF,
or LA. I wouldn't donate based on what they produced with the original 200k

------
libraryatnight
Unfortunately when I log on to my Diaspora I just can't help but feel it's
dead. At this point if this is a viable project the community should take it
and run with it, but I don't see that happening.

I appreciate their goals and hopes, but more money isn't going to make this
more viable. And if it is and we just don't know, it needs to be mentioned how
in the request for cash.

------
Aqwis
Smells of desperation.

------
click170
First, I vote to change the title to include a hint that they're asking for
donations.

I admire what they're doing, and I think they should be proud of how far
they've come, but I also think that Diaspora should continue by community
involvement instead of by another round of soliciting donations. They probably
could have done better off if they'd used a bit of that money and tried to
market Diaspora a bit more, and they definitely should have at least
summarized what they _have_ produced so far, if only for people who haven't
yet joined or aren't familiar.

An example of how I think they could be better marketing themselves: I like
how they're publishing their financials, mentioning and linking to that from
their blog post would make me feel better about donating. My 2c.

------
Joeboy
Aside from the question of funding, does anybody have any opinions on the
product/code itself? I'm signed up and using it, and it seems to work fine. A
decent number of my (non-tech) friends seem pretty keen to move to it. Should
I be en/dis-couraging them?

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Yosem
Our most recent blog post may answer some of your questions:
[http://blog.diasporafoundation.org/2011/10/15/diaspora-
not-v...](http://blog.diasporafoundation.org/2011/10/15/diaspora-not-
vaporware-not-a-nigerian-prince.html)

------
kin
I feel like asking for donations with nothing really to show for it is
stooping quite low.

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zoowar
Sadly, the "spirit of community" is begging for money.

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wavephorm
This sounds an awful lot like "we don't feel like getting real jobs, so give
us money to continue building a non-viable product".

Considering they blew through a couple hundred thousand and have little show
for it -- I wonder how much money would now be required to create something
viable? Only once they figure that out should go to the community or find
investors.

~~~
Joeboy
> Considering they blew through a couple hundred thousand and have little show
> for it

They haven't slain Facebook, but they have a working product, a decent sized
fanbase, a good amount of community involvement via github, and, yes, a lot of
hype. For some people, that would count as quite a lot.

------
fungi
haters gonna hate.

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alttab
Sounds like in the last year after the first code release they all did a bunch
of LSD and turned their product into a open source hippy community.

