

Diaspora’s (YC S12) Next Act: Social Remixing Site Makr.io - mbs348
http://allthingsd.com/20120816/diasporas-next-act-social-remixing-site-makr-io/

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mikemarotti
This is exactly what the internet needs less of. Sad to see the diaspora guys
reduced to overlaying unfunny text captions over jpgs.

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runn1ng
Hm, this is kind of sad.

On one hand, I understand that the original concept wasn't as successful as
everyone thought, so the best thing to do is try to do something else.

On the other hand, "meme creation" is so overdone at this point that I am
surprised that this is the "next big thing" that they try to build

~~~
TylerE
Actually, the prevailing attitude when Diaspora was announced was that it had
as much chance as a bumblebee's fart in a hurricane.

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seagreen
But it didn't actually have to take over, right? It just had to build up a
decent user base. Then it could be linked with identi.ca, and they would be
linked to whatever came along next . . .

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nchuhoai
I know we had this discussion a lot, but I can't be the only one to find this
trend a little disturbing.

I seriously admired (and still do) the Diaspora guys for tackling probably the
hardest problem there is, replacing facebook with a distributed alternative.
And things have probably been a lot tougher than any of us can imagine.

However, how do you go from the ambitious Facebook-Killer to an
quickmeme/pinterest mashup, especially from the godfather YC? I know all the
big things start small somewhere, but something just doesnt feel right to me.
There must be some secret sauce that only pg et al. know.

~~~
kvnn
I'm noticing many problems with your perspective, and since I'm in a good mood
this morning I'm going to try and help force-puke the cool aid out of you.

> I seriously admired (and still do) the Diaspora guys for tackling probably
> the hardest problem there is

Its a trivial problem compared to what SpaceX, Solum, and _tons_ of others are
tackling.

> However, how do you go from the ambitious Facebook-Killer to an
> quickmeme/pinterest mashup

This sentence is a great example of cognitive dissonance. The reality is, it
is easy to go from one to the other because they are pretty much the same
thing: People get to share stuff with each other on a web interface.

> especially from the godfather YC

> There must be some secret sauce that only pg et al. know

PG invests in dumb shit. YC invests in dumb shit. All the time. Their business
model is not "invest in the best ideas in the world" its "invest in people who
have the potential to make billion dollar companies".

Furthermore, PG has stated this in his essays, and there is ample evidence in
the many startups they have invested in throughout the years.

So, I hope I've helped push you through the social-web-center-of-the-universe
and YC-the-creator stage.

I've been there, and its nice to move on.

~~~
graue
Facebook is a powerful societal force at this point, and successfully
disrupting it with a distributed, non-corporate-controlled service would make
a big difference for individual choice. See what I wrote here:
<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4389118>

I get your frustration with the constant stream of Blathrs and idiot.lys —
most of these trendy social sites are never going to amount to anything. But
what Diaspora originally set out to do was and is important.

~~~
kvnn
> Facebook is a powerful societal force at this point, and successfully
> disrupting it with a distributed, non-corporate-controlled service would
> make a big difference for individual choice.

What individual choices would it make a big difference for?

> I get your frustration with the constant stream of Blathrs and idiot.lys

I'm not frustrated.

> But what Diaspora originally set out to do was and is important.

I didn't say otherwise.

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graue
> What individual choices would it make a big difference for?

As I said in the linked post: choosing not to use Facebook is currently a
high-cost/impractical choice for many people. That means we're almost obliged
to accept how they use our data.

You called Diaspora's original aims "a trivial problem". That sounds like the
opposite of "important" to me.

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kvnn
I called Diaspora's original aim trivial compared to the aims of SpaceX.

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graue
Well, that seems like apples and oranges to me. Space exploration may (or may
not) end up being important to human race's survival super-long-term, but
breaking Facebook's monopoly, replacing it with services that offer clear,
honest privacy settings, would help a lot of people now. There's no reason we
can't have both SpaceX and a Diaspora-like project — important in different
ways to different groups of people.

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buster
Wow.. that's soooo much like <https://canv.as/x/everything> (aka the site
built by 4chan moot).

Besides there is so many of such sites already, it makes me sad to think that
resources are wasted there instead of on Diaspora (or other "usefull" stuff).

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mnicole
Canvas is a lot more fun because it adds a level of playful interaction
(stickers) and brings along a known-for-lulz community (4chan and by proxy
Reddit) that Makr.io doesn't. My problem with Makr is that if it's trying to
create memes, not only is the audience terrible at choosing photos, but the
design isn't even using Impact (which may seem silly on the surface, but
ensures the content is read to be funny/sarcastic).

In this sense, it reminds me more of an LJSecret's Pinterest, and these two
audience types don't blend well together at a social level, so I'm not sure
how a a platform catering to both of them will do over time.

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brador
What's impact?

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mnicole
<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Impact_(typeface)>

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casca
So does that mean that Diaspora dream of replacing Facebook is dead? A
Facebook login option and .io domain points strongly in that direction.

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vandershraaf
I think they are delegating the task to app.net

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mcantelon
Except app.net is neither distributed nor open source.

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seagreen
Yeah, this needs to be made entirely clear. App.net is a change in degree,
trying to make another twitter, but better. Diaspora and identi.ca are changes
in kind, trying to make something different to replace fb/twitter.

~~~
vandershraaf
Regardless of how different Diaspora is from Facebook, they still tried to do
the "social network" better. I'm pretty sure every startup wants to make stuff
less suck.

By the way I remember last time when Diaspora first surfaced as the real
alternative of Facebook and I was kinda excited with it. For the first time I
can customized everything I want from my social network. But then the project
run out of any traction and suddenly just disappeared. So I guess, while we
can dream big and aim big, the big stuff would come up eventually and not just
boom in the first place (as Google comes out from home garage and Facebook
comes out from college dorm). It's a big disturbing how App.net just really
booming in its first release but I wish them the best and hope they will
succeed.

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AznHisoka
They say it's hard, yet nobody is gonna pay anything for this. That's the
worst of both worlds. These guys still haven't learned their lesson from
making Diaspora.

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bhughes
Visiting the home page gives the impression of someone's not-quite-technical
mother trying to "do a meme."

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felipebueno
Login with Facebook, Pinterest + 9Gag clone, meme... What the hell??? Hmm, it
smells like April Fools to me but... it's not even April =/

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cmcewen
To me, this just demonstrates the problems that arise when you say you're
trying to tackle this huge gigantic problem. There's a ton of building hype,
and then people are disappointed/scornful when you can't deliver. It reminds
me a bit of the Thiel Fellowship.

Maybe this YC class is just a result of many lessons learned. It does seem the
problems they tackle are, for lack of a better word, lame, but that doesn't
mean they can't grow into something really big.

I guess time will tell, but best of luck to Makr.io. My only wish is that they
share everything they must have learned through the process of Diaspora.

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zio99
Questions on ownership:

1\. Does Y Combinator then own a stake in their product Makr, or in Disapora?

2\. When _Allerta_ went from Waterloo Velocity's incubator to _inPulse_ (at Y
Combinator) and then _Pebble_ (with Kickstarter's help), which pivot does Y
Combinator have an ownership in? The parent company, or the new product?

3\. Did everyday.me get accepted into the YC class, or Noodle Labs (makers of
everyday.me) receive funding?

4\. If you start an unrelated side project while you're there, is it seen as a
pivot? And does YC have a claim in that?

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state
The most confusing part about this is that they don't seem to acknowledge the
disappointment that the public might have after reading this. Diaspora did
such a good job of capturing people's imaginations, but did a terrible job of
communicating about its shortcomings. This just seems to be a continuation of
that.

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jasonwilk
If its a remixing place for memes, why not make them look like original memes?
I don't like the font you chose to overlay since I'm so used to the ones
currently on all the meme generators.

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countessa
so bunch of youngsters abandon ideals and create yet another photo with a
caption sharing site?

color me disappointed

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yumraj
Just curious, if any of the funds raised via Kickstarter for Diaspora were
used in the development of Makr.io, including founders/developers
salaries/expenses/etc.?

If yes, that is the biggest flaw of Kickstarter, no accountability. I can
dream something really great, raise tons of cash via Kickstarter, and use that
to do something else.

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yarrel
They burnt through the Kickstarter funding long before Makr.io.

~~~
mbs348
well, 4 guys for almost two years on about 150k (after taxes and teeshirts)

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DodgyEggplant
They have Login with Facebook. What can we say.

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mbs348
feel free to use login with email.

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k-mcgrady
I think his point is that we can login with Facebook or email but there is no
Diaspora option. In other words you support your competitor but not your own
company.

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mbs348
there is no login with Diaspora.

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k-mcgrady
Sorry, didn't know that. I still think it's a bit strange to support a
competing social network when it's not necessary (people could just sign up
with email).

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shmerl
They should better focus on cleaning up D* code, solid federation and security
(such as end to end encryption and etc.). Flashy UI is really secondary.

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woah
Flashy UI and solid backend code are almost always done by different people.
The designer may be writing markup or some JS, but they won't be hacking on
end to end encryption. The alternative then, would be to fire the designer and
hire another backend guy.

Except they're not going to just not have any UI design at all, and hiring
contractors for a whole project would probably end up being more expensive
than a full time person anyway. Other members of the team could do it
(probably not as well as a specialist), but then they would actually be
spending time on design that they would have spent on the back end, which was
your original criticism.

Also, the "flashiness" of the interface has a lot more to do with the talent
of the designer than anything else. A talented designer may charge more, but
probably not that much more, especially on a feel-good open source kickstarter
project.

~~~
shmerl
In general yes, but in D* case the team is so small, that core devs do all
work including UI and backend. Unless I misunderstood their situation.

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human_error
What's the point of this? Why would you even write an article on this?

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kirillzubovsky
Quick note to all the people who ask: "How is this site different from XYZ?"

Makrio may or may not be different from 4chan (some thoughts on that here
<http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4393668>), but regardless, for many of us
it might be the first service that actually works!

I don't like memes, I think they are stupid, and that's why I've never used
4chan or 9gag or cared much for the Cheeseburger network. But, with Makrio I
actually have fun; something about it is different and it draws me in.

Before you dismiss the site as "just another X", give it a try for a few days,
you just might like it!

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chasing
What the internet truly needs right now is more image macros.

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adam-_-
Slightly weird that they didn't actually link to <http://makr.io> once in the
whole article?

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mbs348
I know, I emailed the author :/

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debacle
While I don't mean to come down on Diaspora specifically, I feel like YC S12
is a decidedly weak class (at least what we've seen of it so far). When the
online interior design site is one of the strongest offerings of the bunch,
what can you really say?

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zio99
I'd say S12's their best one yet, with Coco Controller, Double Robotics,
Flight Fox far ahead in monetization (and business model development) stages
than was previously seen.

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mmanfrin
The irony of this site using a facebook login is so thick you could swim in
it.

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timkeller
Yet another Pinteresting UI. Disappointing.

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mirsadm
Wow some of the comments here are brutal. Granted that the more recent YC
graduates are not the most exciting it seems unnecessary to react with so much
anger.

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timjahn
When I look at companies like SpotHero, who are trying to help people have a
better (and cheaper) parking experience, I'm happy they're trying to help real
people by solving real problems.

When I look at companies like Makr, I simply just wonder "why"? I'm
unconvinced many people in "the real world" will use this or need to use this.

Am I missing something?

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kmholderbein
'Real people' use the Internet, and you spend almost as much time online as
you do in the "real world." You're right - not everyone will use this or need
this, but it's our way of making the Internet - the place we now spend so much
time - a better place, in a different way.

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r4vik
I guess all the hate stays here but judging by the explosion of programming
memes, some hacker news people are having fun over there.

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jenntoda
Wow.. I guess I am late to this thread. But have any haters here actually
tried to use Makr at all? I second Koji - when you're not just passively
watching, but contributing is when the real fun begins! You become part of a
conversation, almost a little competitive fun to outdo your friends. Not
something you will find in random cat picture sites.

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webwanderings
This is a duplicate. Makr.io has been discussed here not too long ago and
heavily criticized.

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haroldp
Why is distributed social apparently so hard that we couldn't buy it with
$150,000?

Is sharing status really a lot more complicated than an RSS feed with public
key encryption?

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code177
Yes. Yes it is.

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haroldp
I'm willing to believe that. Actually, I'm happy to believe that, because it
just always nags on me. You would be doing me a big favor by pointing out how
it is more complicated than that.

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siculars
More insular, inward, bubble-bound myopic nonsense.

