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.