

Ask HN:  What's the status of Diaspora? - waterlesscloud

Any news since the Kickstarter funding hype ended?  Their last blog post was 4 weeks ago, nothing at all about what they've done since getting funding far past their expectations.<p>The Kickstarter approach seemed interesting, but it seems like massively public funding would best benefit from public communication of progress.<p>I'm mostly curious about how they've modified their plan based on their funding, though something more techy in the way of specs would be welcome too.
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holman
Open source distributed open protocol networks made possible through public
funding are always best developed in total secrecy.

Naturally.

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wmf
To be fair, bikeshedding is equally bad.

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carsonbaker
In principle, you should be able to follow their progress on the project's
posts page: <[http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/196017994/diaspora-
the-p...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/196017994/diaspora-the-
personally-controlled-do-it-all-distr/posts>). Their latest post was 5 days
ago, but "for backers only."

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techiferous
This link works: [http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/196017994/diaspora-
the-p...](http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/196017994/diaspora-the-
personally-controlled-do-it-all-distr/posts)

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netmau5
These guys are young and I'm not aware of any previous work they have
accomplished. The expectations of their work and their obvious inexperience
doesn't lead me to think they are going to totally solve the problem by the
end of summer. That being said, they are -young and inexperienced- and I am
always optimistic that those ingredients can lead to interesting and useful
solutions.

I'm happy to sit back and see what happens at the end of the summer. Cut
through the extraordinary expectations and just hope they can contribute to
this space. They now have the funding to keep the dream alive even after the
summer so I think all they need is to iterate one step closer to the solution,
not solve it completely. If they show as much, I think it opens up the door
for others to join their cause and collaborate towards something greater.

Kickstarter only told me that alot of people were interested in social media
privacy. A few people on here noted a while back that the attention and money
they did get may ultimately play a role in the failure of this project. IMO,
that is a little bit of a reach, but it is also perfectly reasonable.
Regardless, I don't think it matters if these guys win- people voted with
their money that they think there is room in town for another breed of
Facebook, ultimately it will come.

I will agree that it would be nice to see a little bit more public
communication, but how can we know they aren't communicating at all? The media
they have gotten has had to allow them a foot in the door with all kinds of
experts in academia, open source, and the commercial world. I'm sure they are
up to their eye-balls in collaborations.

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samratjp
I can't find this one presentation of theirs on scribd. But it had some
inkling of their projected path. Technically speaking, I believe they were
using Ruby on Rails and MongoDB at the time and of course a lot of encryption
details.

Edit: Here's a relevant yet detailed look at what they proposed they'd build:
[http://www.joindiaspora.com/2010/04/30/a-response-to-mr-
vill...](http://www.joindiaspora.com/2010/04/30/a-response-to-mr-villa.html)

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jchonphoenix
I don't believe this project will succeed. It is a project that was completely
based on hype. Couple that with the fact that there was a lot of talk over
facebook's open graph, Diaspora got a lot of press. Now that that's over, they
have to rely on their own wits to make it, which isn't something their team
strikes me as capable of doing.

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dannyr
I heard that they got some office space in SF with the help of Pivotal Labs.

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alexkiwi
Raising money before they know what they even really want to do... sounds like
trouble. Maybe they could come up with something though. Time will tell.

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skbohra
This project is over hyped. Over expectation may kill the project. What is
supposed to be a facebook killer may end up being a disaster.

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motters
I hope this isn't the case, but you may be right. Too much money/fame at too
early a stage in the project might not be such a good thing.

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xenoterracide
Don't get high on your own supply.

