
Diaspora's Curse - Jason Fried - starnix17
http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2330-diasporas-curse
======
ubernostrum
Diaspora's going to do one of two things.

Option one, with approximately 98% probability, is "fail hard". A few geeks
will run nodes and brag about it on places like HN, and that'll be it.

Option two is that Diaspora succeeds, which will require some way around
making everyone run their own node; basically, some company with the
infrastructure to step in and host services for people, for cheap or
preferably free. If an existing company -- one which already offers services
most people use -- were to do this and make it easy enough, they'd probably
end up running a huge percentage of Diaspora.

What sort of company would do that, you ask? Why, the company which already
has all the info Facebook doesn't know about you, and would love to get access
to the info Facebook does. You know, that search engine with the colorful
logo.

~~~
mseebach
> What sort of company would do that, you ask? Why, the company which already
> has all the info Facebook doesn't know about you, and would love to get
> access to the info Facebook does. You know, that search engine with the
> colorful logo.

And that's fine. But because they'll commit to integrating into the open
standard that Diaspora defines, at any given time, you can take your friends
and leave.

If GMail (apps) starts messing with the privacy of my e-mail, or wants me to
pay more than I want to, or changes the layout to something I don't find
pleasing, instead of joining a group complaining, I can leave them in a
heartbeat. The people I exchange emails with won't notice a bit. The promise
of Diaspora is giving me that option for social networks.

There will be a GMail, there will be an Exchange server and there will be a
buggy open-source self-hosted PHP-app (and many many more) in the Diaspora
universe.

~~~
lionshare
Think Wordpress.

Fried just doesn't want you to have that option for project management. It's
not about Diasopora, it's about Basecamp.

~~~
mseebach
Well, wordpress.com isn't a player in the e-mail space, which was the analogy.

And regarding Basecamp/Diaspora: I can already get most of the same
functionality I can get from Basecamp in plenty of other products, both hosted
and open-source. Basecamp is popular because it's really, really good, not by
a long shot because they are the only option.

A project management application on the Diaspora platform would have zero
advantage over Basecamp because of that. And even if it would have, Diaspora
is open, and 37S could just implement Basecamp as a node.

Fried says Diaspora is going to fail because it's the provocative thing to do,
and that's what Fried does on his blog.

~~~
lionshare
Than how do you explain his (successful) campaign against the free google chat
that competes with Campfire? Google shut it down, basically, because it's
"unfair to J.Fried". Since Google did it, nobody else dare to compete directly
with Basecamp, as is.

Diaspora is a paradigm shift, and it will be easier to implement a better
Basecamp without single point of registration and billing.

~~~
ubernostrum
Your comments indicate less of a reasoned argument on the topic, and more of a
personal animosity toward Jason Fried, 37Signals or both.

Perhaps you should step back and take a deep breath?

~~~
lionshare
And you tell me, please, why there is no project management solution in Google
Apss

~~~
modoc
Because they haven't wanted to build one....

------
shadowsun7
> Expectations are too high

Jason's third point is, I feel, the strongest. People aren't contributing to
Diaspora because of Diaspora, they're contributing as an act against Facebook.
The enemy of my enemy is my friend and all that.

I'm not sure if that's a good thing. It's one thing to get in front of a
movement and ride that to success. It's another to get in front of a movement
that's predicated largely on hate. Diaspora would have to turn this into
something positive (Internet users for privacy!) as opposed to just letting
the anti-FB vibe run its course.

PS: not related, but here's a thought: why is it necessary to have a special
node system? Won't a super-simple, super-private social network work just as
well? Facebook's problems isn't so much with the tech as it is with the
company philosophy - they seem to want to do everything in their power to
screw you over for their benefit. Change the philosophy and Facebook becomes a
much harder target to hit.

~~~
lionshare
nice comment from Fried blog (by Mark Pesce): "Jesus fscking Christ. What
these kids need is a little support, not some idiot tearing them down because
they suddenly find themselves in exactly the right place at exactly the right
time with exactly the right idea. Jealous much? If you want to see Diaspora*
succeed, then you’d better work very, very hard coming up with solutions to
every one of the very real problems you just raised. Otherwise, you’re just a
hater, and you’re only making the problem worse."

~~~
rick_2047
I don't think that the author has ever tried to undermine what diaspora is
trying to do in any one word of the short article. What he has tried to tell
everyone is what is essentially the best advice those people can ever get.
Somebody has to put a reality check on things. I seriously believe that a
reality check has to be put on the dream run the diaspora team is getting.
Essentially they are getting money just for an idea. And that too, not even a
half baked one. I would have been more supportive of them getting around 1700%
of there expectations if they had at least a spec out before.

Edit: Changed kids to people as I am younger in intellect and age and it felt
silly when I read it again.

~~~
chegra
The thing about selling the dream is that everybody has a picture in their own
minds that makes it exciting. If we were to put actual code to it, it doesn't
look like what I had in mind. So, alot of people will then say it's junk.

Now this 37 signal's guy might say hey, the expectations are too high. Yes it
is. But like any it is a problem to be solved. Just off the top of my head
frequent release of the progress would migitate this risk. Maybe code or
Screenshots to manage expectation.

Look at Obama, tons of expectation or any other popular president, did they
deliever as expected? No. I think everybody here knows that the presidents
aren't going to deliver as expected. So, it is with these guys. With all the
hype, people can figure it out. Hey they might not do as well as expected, but
we can atleast try to be apart of history.

~~~
lionshare
hmmm... interesting. But really, to write some client software that stores and
provides read/write of the common "social content" (pics, blog posts, writing
on the wall etc) in common standard RESTful way is such a far fetched dream?
It could be simple as www.mysite.com/diaspora/albums or
www.mysite.com/diaspora/wall.

Even Obama can handle it. (Not to mention 4 dedicated CS grads)

~~~
chegra
So, that is the picture you have in your head? See I would be disappoint with
this. My idea of it was you have a node and you add stuff to your profile,
then some body copies it, several copies all on different nodes, so at any
given time your nodes is always available. And there is some kinda security
encrytion for each node. No key = no node.

What I was trying to point out some people are going to be disappointed
regardless. All there is to do is manage it.

~~~
lionshare
as long as the protocol is done right, applications are endless. TCP is maybe
30 years old? The copy is an issue - because once it's copied you can not
fully control it, similar to Facebook.

Yes, there will be disappointments. But it's not "a curse", a healthy 250K
seed-stage worth is not the end of the world, and as someone pointed here:
it's an open source seed. It will grow. Fried should not bash them like that,
unless he has some special interest - which he does. The Diaspora paradigm
threatens his core business and he knows it.

~~~
tptacek
So, now they're not building a Facebook competitor. They're building a
protocol which can be used to build any number of Facebook competitors with
different features. You are literally making Fried's point for him.

------
holdenc
The reason people have donated so much is because they are upset with
Facebook's new privacy policies.

How diaspora can succeed: do the same thing Facebook does, but fix the
privacy.

How diaspora can fail: by making some pie in the sky social networking
platform that will elude most non-technical people. Unfortunately, it sounds
like it's going this direction.

I truly want to see Diaspora work. And it doesn't have to be complicated...at
the moment, all they need is a decent social network (one that's built with
the help of a graphic designer) and chances are you'll have at least one new
user for everyone who donated.

Lastly, make it easy for people to move from Facebook to Diaspora. Ease of use
will be the pass/fail here.

~~~
patio11
_How diaspora can succeed_

Get everyone I know from high school and college using it and I might sign up,
but I don't want to have to send invites, and I also don't want to be invited
unless everyone I know is already there.

Square that circle and they win.

~~~
jimmyjim
If someone such as you, a technical person, is unwilling to take the
initiative in signing up for it, then it's really just a self-defeating
prophecy, isn't it?

My point is, adopting a creed of proactivity is for the good of us all.

~~~
patio11
You mean self-reinforcing in this case, since saying this is going to fail
makes it more likely to fail. Would you like me to lie to you? I'm good at
lying.

This project is going to wildly succeed because it solves a major pain point
for millions of people. They will deliver technically impressive software,
like most people right out of school do. It will naturally take less than
three months.

It will be so easy to host your own web server that my 52 year old aunt will
not even need to ask my 14 year old cousin to do it, but my 14 year old cousin
will do it anyway, because this will be so cool it will be like a boy band had
a slumber party where they gave away free iPods and icecream.

We will see user adoption curves more impressive than anything previously
because users, having gotten a taste of viral engagement mechanisms over the
last several years, are screaming "Send me more invites!!!" and companies
which control viral channels are making them more open with each passing week.

The New York Times will continue championing this particular company, because
they are a respected news organization in it for the long haul and not
desperate to prove that they get this social media thing. Indeed, their
embrace of Diaspora will be as enduring as their embrace of Second Life and
Twitter.

People will flock to pay for social networking, because their biggest issue
with Facebook was that it was so "#$'("# free. The open source community,
which is overwhelmingly charity by 20-something hipsters and not work product
at multi-billion dollar technology firms, will embrace this product more than
they have Mozilla and Linux precisely _because_ it solves no need for any
corporation anywhere.

~~~
dirkstoop
Wow, can't believe I missed out on this. Can I still give them my 5 dollars?
;)

------
rythie
People are thinking about this wrong.

$170k = 4 young inexperienced people for a year to take on Facebook, WRONG.

This should be thought of an open source project, they should use the $170k to
coordinate a large open source project to create this with experts from all
over the web. I'm talking 40-80 regular contributors, 400 or more causal
contributors. This is perfectly possible given the press they have gotten so
far.

They need a leader, it's not clear to me which of the 4 is that leader, but
they need one.

Also, whilst their eventual goal might be to take on Facebook, this is 5 years
off at least. Facebook spent 2 years only in colleges and universities to get
critical mass. Diaspora could try the same or work with niche interests like
Ning does or do company social networks like Yammer do, to get started.

~~~
lionshare
True, true, true.

They will not take FB themselves, but this project will start the underlying
infra. The "BitTornet" of social networks. Than we will need the clients, the
eco system etc. But it's the first essential step.

And guess what? one of Diaspora's applications will be a distributed project
management layer. And the FB of project management, Basecamp, will not like
it.

So we better keep supporting it for the remaining 15 days than listening to a
the "closed system" competitor(Fried).

------
andrewvc
I expect what any reasonable person who just invested $170k in a group of four
strangers with vague plans and no proof of concept would expect.

------
hartror
A fair and completely unsurprising analysis, the spotlight is definitely on
too early and I will be surprised if they survive it's hard glare. Jason's
thoughts on taking money are well documented but I've always disagreed with
this as an over generalisation, it depends on the people receiving the money.
Certainly the scale that they're aiming at will require mountains of cash and
having some early on doesn't have to mean they will get carried away.

And of course there is the fact that the story is the money, not the idea,
which is the worst sign of the bunch in my opinion!

------
jackowayed
I agree that they're probably screwed--on top of the normal how-do-you-get-
enough-people-to-switch-that-users-get-real-utility-out-of-the-social-network
issue, people now expect, by virtue of the fact that they've got $170k and
lots of attention, that they have something ready to compete with Facebook by
the end of the summer--but I don't think they would have done any better
waiting.

By doing it this way, they got to strike while the iron was hot. Right as Open
Graph and the dozens of "Facebook is pure evil" posts were fresh in people's
minds, they asked for money. With startups, the best time to raise money is
when people badly want to give it to you, and it's no different here. If they
had waited a few months, not only might they have had trouble paying their
living expenses for the summer and their tuition bills in the fall, but they
also, had they asked for donations after a summer of getting a crude v1
together, would have had a much harder time getting the money because Facebook
privacy concerns wouldn't be as strongly in people's minds as they are now. Do
you think they'd get anywhere near $170k with a v1--which would be nowhere
near ready to kill Facebook--but in a few months when most people don't care
anymore? In fact, it's quite possible that having a crude version 1 today
would get them less money. Right now, they're selling nothing but ideas, which
are easy for anti-Facebookers to latch onto. If they had a rudimentary
implementation, potentially donors would be thinking about all of the ways in
which the product sucks, not all of the ways in which it could be great. By
having no product to criticize, they get the donors to dream.

And at least this way, they're set financially. They'll still probably fail,
but probabilistically, they were going to fail either way. This way, if they
do manage to ignore the hype and get a great product built, they'll definitely
have money when they need it.

Another way that this does help them is something PG has pointed to--fear of
failure. If they were just friends hacking this thing together in their spare
time, maybe they would have made some grand statements to a few friends and
family members, but there'd be a pretty low barrier to saying, "oh, building
something with Facebook's capabilities is extremely hard. And even if we do a
decent job, we probably won't get any users. Let's go play video games." But
now, they can't give up entirely. They have to at least build something that
sort of gets the job done. Thousand of people gave them money to do so, so
they have a duty to do it. And millions of people read the articles about
Diaspora and will read about it again if they fail. If Diaspora becomes a
joke, every potential employer of theirs will think of them as "the guys who
failed miserably at building Diaspora." All of a sudden, failure comes with a
very high cost.

~~~
zeemonkee
If they did fail miserably, I'd still hire them like a shot - they've shown
they've had the chops to try and the initiative to think out of the box. The
experience they would get through failure - whether the failure is technical.
marketing or finance - would be an invaluable lesson for their future careers,
far better than some internship at big company X.

An employer who would negatively judge a teenager on the failure of what is
essentially a summer project would be very, very stupid.

~~~
mseebach
> they've shown they've had the chops to try and the initiative to think out
> of the box.

Really? Are there any serious geeks that haven't hashed out a basic
architecture (napkin-level) for a distributed Facebook-replacement over a beer
or some coffee? I know I have, twice. The difference between me and them? A
pretty website, a video and (probably the kicker) patronage by the NYT.

I agree that it shouldn't reflect negatively on them, quite the opposite, but
are we back to 1998, where a good idea, "out of the box" and CS-grad in the
same sentence is a qualification?

~~~
zeemonkee
I would assume they've gone a little further than something on a napkin, and
that by the end of the summer they will have _something_ to show for their
work and investment, and haven't spent the money on partying.

Let's judge their results then. If it's a failure despite their best efforts,
I certainly wouldn't count that against them, if they've learned from their
mistakes and have written some good code in the process.

Depends on how you define success/failure of course - I very much doubt they
will make a dent on Facebook but if they come up with an open standard for
distributed social networks others can build on, that counts very much a
success in my book.

~~~
mseebach
> Let's judge their results then.

Absolutely, that was my point! I reacted to your statement that you'd hire
them even if they'd failed miserably. If they're able to keep focus on what's
important and end the summer with a concrete, open standard, even with little
or no software, that's not a miserable failure, that's a little short of the
goal.

But there are many, many more modes of failure than not getting people to
leave Facebook by august. In fact, I'm pretty sure that's not even their goal.

------
bkbleikamp
I think another issue is their solution to the problem is flawed. Most users
don't have a desire or the ability to run their own server.

Running a basic application on a web server seems trivial to nerds, but to
average users it seems impossible.

~~~
_sh
Do you need to run your own mail server because you have an email address?

Diaspora _should_ have a similar model. You can use a hosted node, or one your
ISP provides you when you sign up, just like they provide you with an email
address.

~~~
loup-vaillant
> Do you need to run your own mail server because you have an email address?

We don't, but we should, eventually. What you describe is only the first step.
The ideal world clearly lies in easy, ubiquitous self hosting.

------
andr
I think their surest way to fail is to do a very close Facebook clone. Let's
not forget that those upset by Facebook's privacy are but a vocal minority.
Catering for them won't be enough to get everyone to move. For most people
Diaspora would be just a harder to use version of Facebook with less people on
it.

------
blhack
Diaspora's curse is that it is a solving a problem that only exists in the
eyes of people who don't need somebody to solve it for them.

Does anyone think my mom or my sisters give a damn about facebook privacy
issues? NO! The only people that seem to are the types that come to HN and we
all, for the most part, run our own webservers with our own blogs and pictures
and soforth anyway.

~~~
loup-vaillant
When I tell non-technical people that Google is doing semantic analysis on
their e-mail, (1) they believe me, and (2) they find that scandalous.

Unfortunately, this is not enough for them to switch. But if setting up and
configuring a personal mail server at home took 5 minutes and no help, they
would switch.

Now, we need someone to make Eben Moglen's "freedom box", to make is as sleek,
as usable, and as cool as the iPhone. Then, people will buy it. Maybe not over
privacy concerns, but at least, privacy will become a selling point instead of
the major technical hurdle it currently is.

------
blackguardx
$170K isn't that crazy. Since when do programmers have to do the whole
starving artist routine to get respect? Living close to the edge doesn't make
you work any better. If it did, you would have to question companies like
Google who give their employees really good benefits.

$170k split four (or more) ways actually doesn't sound like much, especially
when you consider their location (NYC), and their massive student debt. NYU
isn't a cheap school.

On a personal note, I lived in Harlem on a $24k/yr grad student salary this
past year. It was a reasonably comfortable living, but being poor in New York
City adds a lot of stresses to life that don't exist elsewhere. Walking around
piles of dog shit and trash every day takes its toll after awhile.

I was actually surprised how well I made out, considering I was making the
least amount of money I have ever made since age 19 and living in the most
expensive city I have ever lived in my life. That being said I could be a lot
more comfortable with just a slightly higher income.

~~~
zalew
Isn't that crazy, but they were aiming for 10k. At least that was official,
maybe it was just a teaser, on purpose. Sad is, that they aren't even started
and there's already lots of hype and I hope people don't get to the hate phase
even before they launch.

I'm totally positive about the concept, but I always thought one should get
motivated on his own, start the project, and beg for money to go further. This
seems it's done the opposite way - give us the cheese so we start coding - and
donating a video with a chalkboard I feel is a bit too much, for the moment.

Still, I'm very curious about this project and wish them best.

~~~
hyp3rVigi1ant
There's a 67 minute video on youtube
(<http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRTzRAtDujU>) where they're introducing the
idea (with more details and exploring some possibilities) to a couple people
(professors?) at their college and end up showing their _very basic_
prototype. They did this before they created the kickstarter page, raised all
this money, and got all this attention.

------
cema
I paid them a little just to support them. A failed attempt is better than no
attempt.

That said, I tend to agree with most of what Jason said. Their pitch is much
more sales than substance at this point.

------
tomlin
"You want attention after you’re good, not before."

This one simple thing defines success in the majority. I really dig much of
Jason Fried's insight.

------
ErrantX
My issue is this; Diaspora is two things;

\- firstly it is a very complex sounding solution (which is great in a way - I
love technically interesting ideas/research)

\- secondly it's not a direct solution to the problem.

The issue, as I see it, is that Facebook have a stranglehold over the social
net. The solution isn't about hosting our own content (that is clearly
impractical for the majority of social users). The solution is about splitting
the infrastructure between multiple providers - but in a way that allows a
fully integrated experience for users.

That way the "industry" will be self regulating (because if a company looks
bad people can migrate quickly away from it).

------
oliverkofoed
Even if diaspora fails completely, all the investors will have still gotten
something else for their money. The fact that diaspora overshoot their initial
10K goal by such a wide margin coupled with all the ensuing publicity the
story is getting, is sending a loud and clear signal to Facebook that people
are very dissatisfied with the current Facebook direction.

In fact, they're so dissatisfied, that they're willing to put their money
where their mouth is, which is a very strong signal to send to Facebook.

Even if diaspora goes nowhere, it might still have a positive impact on
Facebook.

------
iamclovin
I agree with more-or-less with Jason Fried. It's easier to succeed when
expectations are low and you exceed expectations. I guess the more money you
raise, the more the expectations are, and hence it's difficult to exceed them.

Then again, it's not Diaspora guys' fault that the press seem to have taken to
them as saviours of the world.

On a related note, @jacobian has predicted Diaspora to be the new Chandler :)
<http://twitter.com/jacobian/status/14120142558>

------
stcredzero
I think the Diaspora group should consider "outsourcing." Hold a competition
to pick 6 projects, which will get $20k each. At the end of the 2nd phase,
they should pick the "winners" and integrate their code. The winners get
another $20k.

This gets the initial pressure off of them, allows for a large amount of
audience participation, and could attract a lot of programming talent to their
project.

------
synnik
Diaspora may or may not succeed. The whole "node" concept turns me off,
personally...

I'm more interested in the idea that is could compete with Facebook at all.
Facebook has become too big for a small startup to just step up and replace
it.

The reason I say this is that startups tend to follow the founders' vision,
then get iterated based on customer feedback.

But "replacing Facebook" isn't a solidified enough vision to act upon. The
project team would need to first find out what "Facebook" means to the average
user. Because, like it or not, the readers of HN are NOT the average FB user.
There would need to be some dedicated research done to determine what feature
set would even appeal to the masses.

Once that is done, then we can talk solutions and build a team to make it
happen.

But trying to point at any extant project and say it is the replacement
project... I just don't buy it.

------
runevault
This post hit the nail on the head and got me thinking about the whole thing
again (Diaspora, not the problem they're trying to solve. I already promised
myself I wasn't going to jump into that race with however many other groups
see the gold mine and are going to chase it).

I'm starting to think this was something one of them through out as an awesome
idea, they said hell yeah why not... and then the money REALLY started pouring
in, and then the Times showed up... and it's just snowballed.

I wonder how serious they were even planning on being before it got so big.

Mine you, I hope I'm wrong, but it's just a gut feeling I have.

------
sandee
170K is not just a funding for Diaspora, it is also a SOS to hackers all
around for a decentralized social web.

Surely it got many people to read into it and its highly likely some other
group will make a version which actually works.

~~~
jonathanwallace
Exactly. Why is it so hard for geeks to see this?

Is it envy?

------
Dysiode
While the article makes very strong points, it fails to address that Diaspora
wasn't _seeking_ attention and merely had attention thrust upon it. Since
everyone else seems to be following suit, I'll throw out my two cents worth as
well :)

Diaspora needs to be exactly what they said it will be. To do that they need
to Ignore Everybody (<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1350292>) and stick
to their original timeline :)

Lets also not forget that they've actually got some code. That's better than
some bloggers seem to realize.

~~~
nano81
I think it's naive to think they weren't seeking attention. It's entirely
possible they weren't seeking this level of attention, but they reached out to
one person (at least) who wrote a story and caused the snowball to start
rolling. If they wanted to be stealthy, they would not be giving interviews to
the NYT.

------
char
I completely agree with Jason. The way Diaspora is starting goes against
everything I've learned in my experience with startups. Unexperienced hackers
raising a ton of money without as much as an MVP to show for it seems like a
recipe for disaster. Probabilistically, they will fail, especially without any
outside influences or wisdom.

I can only hope these kids have connections with people (and resources, such
as PG essays) which can help guide them in making smart decisions. And I hope
they listen.

------
bartl
What a Facebook killer needs most, is _users_. Diaspora has none, as it
doesn't yet exist.

There already are other social networks that have plenty of users, but not
enough to be a Facebook killer: Orkut (remember that? Apparently still big in
Brazil, currently 100 million active users worldwide according to Wikipedia)
and NetLog (big in Europe at 65 million users).

No matter how much traction Diaspora gets, I think it cannot possibly beat
those.

------
robryan
To be fair I don't think they were out to raise so much attention, just enough
money that they could actually spend there summer on this vs needing alternate
employment.

They could turn money down but at this stage they already have the attention
and that money could fund years of an open source project instead of having to
worry about supporting themselves later to if things work out.

------
DanielBMarkham
Reality check: most startups fail.

Did Jason give us the reasons this one will fail? Or just make the general
prediction we all knew already anyway?

------
latch
I generally agree with what the 37 signals guy say, but their view is never
the only view.

Sure it might take most people longer to get something up with $150K than with
$0K, but that isn't true 100% of the time. VC might be bad for most, but
certainly not for all.

The talk in absolutes to get their point across - its a necessary method since
everyone else is doing it.

------
rsinger9
Some people have the notion that when you have a good idea, all you need is
some money and time in order to be successful. It's not like that. You can
have all the money in the world (look at big corps like Microsoft), and you
can have great ideas, but unless you can _execute_ , the money and ideas don't
matter.

------
physcab
Expectations for Diaspora are too high? Diaspora has a curse? I got the
feeling from Kickstarter that people _without_ expectations give money to a
cause. When I donate money to Kiva, I know fully well that that money may
never come back to me, and I am 100% ok with that notion.

------
jakemcgraw
Give them $25 for a t-shirt, it'll be like a pets.com t-shirt of yesteryear.
Seriously though, even if these guys are a total failure, this whole episode
shows that, if the conditions are right, open source software w/o a huge
corporate entity can have a mass appeal. Exciting times.

------
milkshakes
All these guys did was try to raise enough money to pay rent and food (and
barely!). Yeah, the whole world is watching, but they weren't exactly asking
for the attention. They just struck a nerve.

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Oranj
Majority of FB users do not know or do not care about threats to their
privacy. Diaspora will be percieved as something uber-nerdy. Try talking about
"running your own nod" to a girl in a bar.

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sz
Does anyone think they were destined to succeed had they not been unexpectedly
shoved into the spotlight and showered with cash?

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j_baker
When I first saw the title, I tried to figure out how Jason Fried was
Diaspora's curse. :-)

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andrewljohnson
This is just echo chamber hacker nonsense. Nothing wrong with a little starter
capital.

~~~
strlen
It's not "hacker nonsense". 37signals is generally fairly different in their
opinions from most hackers (e.g., I strongly disagree with their opinion that
Moore's law means web companies shouldn't wory about scalability: Gene Amdahl
may beg to differ).

What Jason is saying is common business sense: don't sell something you
haven't built. Build something as you're selling it, iterating on the product
and adjusting to customer feedback. When the product gains traction, take
external money (if needed and desired) to scale the business.

Facebook already had (measurable) traction _before_ they took VC funding.

~~~
andrewljohnson
This is not VC funding! This is seed capital... VCs hand out millions, not a
couple hundred thousand. I believe in boot-strapping, and I boot-strapped my
own start-up, but if these guys can get a small amount of money to work with,
it is helpful.

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tszming
You have to be cruel to be kind.

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sscheper
He forgot the fourth curse:

"Your thirteen year-old sister will crap her pants when she's told to download
a social "node" on her computer in order to tell her friends that Abercrombie
is having a sale."

~~~
Manfred
Not everyone has to run their own node. I believe the idea is that you can
have people you trust run a node for you.

But you're right, for most people this will be a big hurdle.

~~~
mrvir
I guess letting users run nodes presents some man-in-the-middle security
issues to be solved as well.

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jorsh
Diaspora's curse: They don't actually have a working product to show off -- or
any product at all. This whole farce has been amazing. I can't believe anyone
actually thinks they're going to produce -anything- that can actually be run
or used.

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lionshare
It's not Jason Fried it's Jason AFRAID.

Because sooner than later we will see plug-ins that enable distributed project
management.

As these guys say, we don't need a centralized hub for social network. We also
don't need one for projects (Basecamp).

It's the Campfire story again: Than he had an echo against "evil" Google. but
what can he say to a few nice guys going open source? If Mr. Fried didn't roll
his campaign against google free chat client, we would have a free one instead
of paying for campfire. BUT HE WILL USE HIS ALLEGED "GREATER GOOD" VOICE TO
ELIMINATE ANY COMPETITION.

~~~
bandushrew
That really seems like a stretch, whatever you think about Diaspora, every
point he made is absolutely right. They have no code, they have 000's of
people watching them and they have 4000+ people who believe they should have a
say in the development process. If someone asked me up front which I would
prefer to work with, 200k in money and 4000+ who all have a 'right' to be
involved and their hand on a different piece of the elephant, or neither of
the above....The answer would be easy. That equation would be hugely different
if I had released something already and those 4000+ people had their
expectations driven by that....

~~~
lionshare
I think it's not. It's not the "product". On the Campfire issue he fought
against Google's fully baked and ready product. Since he can't stick "evil" to
these guys, he took another PR strategy TO SPOIL FURTHER MONEY IN.

As a "central hub" owner he has a strong interest here.

Diaspora barrier will be for non geeks, to install and configure the "nodes".
But since many of his customers are geeks, they will have no trouble to
switch.

