Analyzing Diaspora | Hacker News Reader

Analyzing Diaspora

jonchu.posterous.com

14 pointsjchonphoenix17 comments

A few thoughts:

* I don't think that they are outsourcing the coding to Pivotal. I got the impression that Pivotal liked their idea and offerend to give (rent?) them office space and monitors and give (probably not for money) them some high-level guidance on how to manage the project and the major implementation details. I didn't really get the impression that Pivotal was writing code for them, save maybe "can you help me with this bug?" or the like. If anyone knows that I'm wrong, please correct me.

* I agree that Diaspora is almost certainly not going to topple Facebook. I think what they meant when they said they'd probably succeed is that they'd probably meet the deadlines they have set for themselves and have a product to release at the end of summer that does all the major things they were planning to have it do.

* If Diaspora does have any chance of catching on (beyond "catching on" in the Quroa sense where a whole bunch of tech-savvy people from the Valley use it and not too many others do), I think some kind of "DiasporaHub" site will have to come around. Someone that basically says "for free, we'll host you a Diaspora node with a forked version of Diaspora that's only different in that there are ads on the side. We promise never to access your data or otherwise violate your privacy." If some viable free option comes along, it would at least have some chance.

* I highly doubt that every single Facebook employee can code.

I majorly agree with you.

Also, I can't help but get feelings of the author being too critical and dismissive. Is this because the Diaspora folks got a lot of initial funding from their petition? Or is it the author's own ego? Either way, the article gives me a nagging feeling of superiority.

I did get the feeling I was being a little over belligerent. I was just extremely angry that the general public is so caught up in the hype that they failed to see the major failure points. $200,000 is a lot of money that could have been put to better use (such as charity or donated to OSS) instead of being wasted on a project that's business model contradicts its reason for existence.

The original commenter has pointed out all of the technical issues I see with your post, minus the tone. I felt you were overly harsh. I can understand being frustrated with the situation, but, come on... in 3 months it will either die away or they will have succeeded (for some amount of success) and we can easily move on with our lives.

> Facebook. A CEO that's proven that he understands technology. A team where every single engineer is brilliant. A company where every single person including sales, design, and business employees, can code.

Talk about putting Facebook on a pedestal. Especially that last sentence. Where the hell did that come from?

When I interviewed with facebook, I was told that every person in the company knew how to code so that if someone had a cool idea, they didn't have to wait for an engineer to implement it.

Wow. I know people at Facebook who don't know how to code. And that's fine, they are business types. Seems really disingenuous for Facebook to claim that during interviews.

Sure, all the engineers and managers thereof can code, but there aren't very many of them. Not that long ago they were bragging about having 1 million users per technical staff member — but they employ a lot more content moderators and ad sales staff than engineers.

So, what's the point of questioning how good they are at coding if it's going to be open sourced by the time anyone can use it?

Also, I think you misunderstand how the node model is supposed to work: one node is going to support multiple user accounts. More like OpenID than pure peer to peer.

Also, who cares about what Facebook is doing? This represents an entirely different operational model.

I think the author is missing a key point... these guys are letting you own your own data, whether you host it on your own server or on a wordpress.com-like shared host. Presumably since you control the database your info is in, you can easily export it (and your friends') or extend it as you wish.

I don't see how the author can ignore that point. Data portability is a key driver for Diaspora.

It wasn't ignored. The point was that if its on a worpress.com-like host, someone still has control of your data that isn't you. What's the different if its on a wordpress.com-like host or if its on Facebook? Someone else still has control and a copy of your stuff.

It was ignored. The point is not who can see your data (privacy), the point is whether or not you can take your data and move it elsewhere (portability).

I think the analysis is great but not factual. To assume that they're not good coder, or even coders is just based on nothing. Do you know that for a fact?

I hope they be a lot clever and end up with something different than they are proposing, otherwise they will just burn cash and time.

The founders don't look any hacky.

How do you look "hacky"?

Step 1: cut a hole in a box...

Step 2: put your junk in that box...

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