

What really happened to Diaspora, the 'Facebook Killer?' It's complicated - sfnuop
http://motherboard.vice.com/2012/10/2/what-happened-to-the-facebook-killer-it-s-complicated--2

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abrichr
Very interesting article, IMO.

I feel like the technical challenges involved in a distributed social network
that the author mentions -- keeping profile views secret, for example -- could
easily be overcome if the network were implemented over an encrypted layer
such as TOR.

Wikipedia has a list of distributed social networking projects [1], many of
which support such encryption. I suppose the problem then becomes one of
adoption more than anything else. I could see the latency issues associated
with encryption and anonymization being an issue in this respect. It's another
Catch-22.

I suspect the only thing that can dethrone Facebook will be a significant
event that will trigger a mass exodus.

Edit: After reading through the site a bit, it seems that Friendica [2] is
indeed production ready. They definitely need some better marketing.

[1] <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Distributed_social_network>

[2] <http://friendica.com/>

