Why Diaspora will win | Hacker News Reader

Why Diaspora will win

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25 pointsssclafani19 comments

All they need to do is to re-implement facebook (trivial, right, after all it's already been done at least once), woo away 400M users from their direct competitor that has very big backers, against an established network effect (that's trivial too, shouldn't take more than two weeks, after all once you have the first couple of million the rest will follow), they have to do all this without any privacy mess-ups or their credibility is shot (and they are all big names in the cryptography scene so we can see that one as in the bag) and to top it off they have to stay good friends through all this.

Really, what could possibly go wrong.

On top of that, they have decided to solve those problems in facebook that do not really need solving, after all, if the only thing they did different was to default all privacy settings to do not share this they'd be doing just fine.

To paint this as Diaspora vs Facebook and to suggest they will 'win' is to make it impossible for them to succeed at any level. This just makes it harder for Diaspora because it raises the bar at which they will be considered a success to the 'impossible to meet'.

If they attract a 100K userbase that is happy they ought to be able to call it a success. But that's no longer an option with bullshit-titled articles like these.

Leave them alone, support them, give them resources but don't raise that bar any higher, please.

Writers like this are setting these kids up for failure, no matter how successful they are.

I see Diaspora kind of like a third-party candidate in an election (in the US). They won't win, but it's not really about that. It's about forcing the big guys to take a better stance on their one important issue.

I also see Diaspora like a third-party candidate in a US election, but in a different way:

They won't win, they never stood a chance, and beyond a small legion of die-hard supporters, never had any public traction with the public beyond "oh hey, did you know what's-his-face is running?". And like most obscure third party candidates, they will impart no significant force upon the major candidates' policies or views.

Sorry to be a debbie downer, but I have a hard time treating seriously a team that has no track record nor even the slightest bit of code written. Come on, we've been around that block to many times to be fooled by this, haven't we?

Don't get me wrong, it may very well be that some agile startup will come along and eat Facebook for lunch. Hell, it'd be great to see some real competition in this sphere - but from everything we've seen of Diaspora, there's no real reason to expect them to do anything but sit around, write a bit of code (if they even get to that) and then fizzle out.

Honestly, I don't think it matters who the developers are or what their coding expertise is at this point. They were there in the right place at the right time for the media to latch on to their story and to bring those issues into the light. They could take the money and run away laughing at this point, and they still will make an impact on Facebook because the media were able to point to their business model and say "See, things could be different!". Yes, they have ideas that have been tried and failed before, but their story is "sexier" and better timed than those. It's not so much the people or the code, but the position and timing.

The problem with latching on by the media is that goes away as quickly as it comes.

The main problem with Diaspora is that they're focusing on the technology, and on the servers. The real solution to the "Facebook problem" lies with the end users, not with the servers, however decentralized they were.

I'm pretty sure Diaspora will produce an application. And I'm pretty sure only a handful of early adopters will set up the servers, and it will be used by even fewer zealots. The "real" users -- who are a majority on Facebook -- will never switch.

And don't forget that there already is a project doing precisely what they intend to build: http://opensource.appleseedproject.org/

And they're not the only ones:

https://openqabal.dev.java.net/

(disclaimer: OpenQabal is a project I started).

I'm pretty sure there are a few other projects out there as well, doing more or less the same thing(s). If everybody working on one of these projects could get in sync, and agree to common protocols and formats, so that they could all interoperate, it would make it that much more likely for the federated / decentralized approach to catch on. I'm not sure it'll happen though. Nobody seems to really be talking about it (yet).

Agreed. The "Facebook problem" is not solvable by writing better software in my opinion. There is just a difficult balance to strike between over-sharing and not sharing enough to enjoy on social networks. Until consumers become more educated, or you are writing for a niche, that issue just won't go away.

Yeah, I meant all that in the context of "making a difference in Facebook's privacy standards", not saying "Diaspora will succeed". Other than the exposure it has, I don't see it having any huge advantages.

I hate that diaspora got so much money. I don't think these guys are proven enough, nor will their solution be the one that eventually be the best. I also fear that they will screw it up and the pro-facebook crowd will declare it dead.

People can give their money away as much as they want.

Why would you hate it ? Are you jealous ?

The problem is that the amount of money they received is a pittance compared to what is needed to take on FB, and it will take a lot more than just money.

They're in a dangerous zone of having high expectations and no product, it reminds me very much of the cuil announcement, and I fear it will end more or less the same.

edit: dear downmodders, I know that you don't like my position on this but wishing it to be so doesn't make it so.

I hate they got so much, because they're much less likely to succeed when they can plan huge from the start. 150k will feel like they can do more then they really can. Where something like 30k would inspire leanness.

On the one hand, I think the aspect of Diaspora-the principles of user-controlled content (i.e. It's mine, and I use it however I want vs. It's mine, but it's on their infrastructure) is great.

On the other hand, I think that banking the success of their product based on the premise that "we are the anti" Facebook is dangerous, possibly lethal. Build what people want, cater it to their wants; don't spend your campaign time telling us what the other guy ISN'T doing.

Yeah, seems like Facebook is in a position to gain by making some highly publicized moves toward assuring privacy... get that in a couple of news cycles and people will assume it's a fixed-enough problem (whether it is or not).

I don't know that I agree. StackOverflow become popular by being the Anti-ExpertsExchange. The elevator pitch was literally "Experts Exchange with out the evil" and they seem to be doing quite well.

I don't know, Facebook did pretty well by being the anti-Myspace.

Why Duke Nukem Forever will win game of the year 2011.

I'm expecting Google to roll in and take over any day now. Social networking almost overlaps with their existing turf already. I seriously doubt Buzz as it exists now is as far as they'll go.

We're clearly moving to a more federated system and I'm not convinced that a dorm room startup can pull off an industry unification move like this. They don't have the traction.

yeh, so this post was as bad as the other. In fact it's probably worse for being so speculative :)

Beyond the fact this is unlikely to be the "next Facebook" there isn't a lot we can do now except wait and see.

What about all the other facebook-replacement projects? Why didn't they "win"?

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