

Anti-Facebook Startup Diaspora Promises to "Go Faster" - B-Scan
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/anti-facebook_startup_diaspora_promises_to_go_faster.php

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wickedchicken
I was about to impulsively donate when I first saw the Kickstarter page but
decided to watch the video to get more info. Watching these guys talk made me
realize they had no idea what they were doing (the thought in my mind was
"have they ever coded anything?"). Diaspora: shitty engineering with great web
design (not unlike most social startups today). Luckily this leaves the
playing field open for people who actually know their shit.

~~~
derefr
I don't understand why the Diaspora folks decided to do their own engineering
in the first place. Why not just use the money to fund development on
Appleseed/OneSocialWeb, then box up the result (with support et al.) under the
brand "Diaspora"? In est, do what Apple did with Mach/BSD, and later did again
with Webkit/KHTML.

~~~
wickedchicken
I think it's clear that they didn't really know what they were getting into.
Much like GNU freebeards designing a core system and "throwing on a GUI" ends
with a terrible mess, a bunch of UI guys inexperienced in systems software
yields a beautiful failure. Think of that 'programmer hierarchy' poster: "Ruby
programmers consider themselves superior to everybody but are not aware of the
existence of non-web languages." You need to have different backgrounds or
really deep experience to come out with something great.

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pstack
I have a founders account from early contributions that I have never used. I
logged in, setup the account, asked a few people if they wanted invites
(nobody did) and haven't touched it, since. I don't care for other social
networking sites (though I use LinkedIn), but supported Diaspora for
principal.

I'm not expecting much, anymore. I hope otherwise, though.

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dotcomsmarties
The idea had so much potential; the execution was flawed though. Too much time
has passed and yet Diaspora has yet to make much of an impact on the social
network scene. Perhaps it is time to give it a rest, and let some other social
network ideas bloom.

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mtogo
Diaspora is already dead. The masses won't use it because they already use
Facebook, which fits their needs perfectly. Diaspora tried to appeal to the
tech crowd, but they failed miserably with that by not having any idea what
they're doing.

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jmathai
Chicken and egg to the max. Unfortunately, I just don't see this gaining any
sort of significant traction (which it requires to be remotely useful).

Kudos to the team though for seeing their (great in theory) idea to fruition!

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sausagefeet
What does "go faster" mean? I have little hope for Diaspora, it seems to be on
kerfluffle after the next.

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kloncks
...must every headline be this inflammatory? Must everything be "Anti-
Facebook", "Anti-Google", or an "iPhone Killer"??

They're just promoting a new idea. No Anti-Facebook. Just a thought and
innovation.

For the love of god, Zuck invested $1k in them.

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Kylekramer
I am all for less inflammatory headlines, but Diaspora was 100% created and
funded due to certain intense period of Facebook backlash. The fact that Zuck
invested some pocket change supports that Diaspora is the anti-Facebook, as it
was a PR move (that apparently worked).

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Sizlak
We're headed off a cliff!

Go faster!

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thebooktocome
I wonder how much of their capital they've run through.

~~~
rdl
Approximately 2 millicolors, I think.

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marcin
Is there any place to actually see Diaspora in action?

Marcin / linkfindr.com

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sp332
You can try it out at <https://joindiaspora.com/> but eventually you will be
able to choose or host your own federated server.

Also, it's against etiquette to have a sig on this site.
<http://ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html> Not a big deal, just kind of
annoying.

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marcin
oh, and you can't check it on joindiaspora, unless they sent you an invite -
that is precisely why I asked the question

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sp332
Ah, I see. There is a list of servers with notes here:
[https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/wiki/Community-
supporte...](https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/wiki/Community-supported-
pods)

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dj_axl
PogoPlug (<http://www.pogoplug.com/>) and Dropbox (<https://www.dropbox.com/>)
are more popular than Diaspora, methinks. Maybe they could rename themselves
to "Diaspora Cloud" or similar.

