I realise that none of us were expecting Diaspora to ever displace Facebook, but I was surprised that it's perceived as being disappointing — especially given that there are nearly 3,000 people watching it on GitHub!
So what's the general sentiment? Excited? Disappointed? Couldn't care less?
Systems like Facebook depend on a dual sided market. There's nothing to read if nobody is writing, and why write if nobody is reading?
I had a friend years ago who ran a multimedia-oriented site that only took open formats like Ogg Vorbis. Although hypothetically, Ogg Vorbis is a free format which might be accessable on more operating systems and devices, practically, publishing in Ogg Vorbis is like speaking in Pig Latin. MP3 files just play for most people on the devices and OSes that they actually use w/o any trouble.
Even though there is an articulate group of people who are concerned with privacy and other philosophical problems with Facebook, the fact is that most people just don't care -- if you ~really~ cared about those things, you probably wouldn't be oversharing your life on a social network anyway. In fact, from a 2010 perspective, Facebook's early policy of only publishing to your 'close friends' looks medieval: the industrial spy, potential employer, litigator, or other person who wants to use information to harm you is going to extract it one way or another, from such a network. If you really want to keep something a secret, keep your mouth shut.
Or maybe being realistic about what you're promising? They didn't give a featureset, they just promised a first version. That means something different to everyone.
Kim serves on the executive council of TechNet, a bipartisan coalition of executives focused on the growth of the technology industry and economy, on the board of the Global Security Institute and on the University of California President's Board on Science and Innovation. She is a Fellow at Carnegie Mellon University's Center for Engineered Innovation.
I have a bit of a weird hobby for checking out where previous "bright lights" of the Internet world ended up. It's surprising how many of them deliberately try to stay out of the limelight and hold NED board positions or work at quietly profitable enterprise-focused startups that don't get much press.
Social Networks are and have always been interface challenges, not technical ones (at least until you get to massive scale).
The more logical way to address privacy concerns would be through interface (clearer controls, better explanations of who can see what, simpler ways to share with select groups, etc.)
The idea that a buggy, self-hosted, SSL-encrypted node would address any of people's dissatisfaction with Facebook is, I think, silly to begin with.
I'm trying to find it now but I distinctly remember they said it would be written in PHP because that's what they knew. Switching to Rails was a terrible decision at that point in the game. Not that Rails is a terrible decision but using other people's money to learn Rails was probably not the best choice and the quality of the code suffered.
I would love to hear some discussion on why they decided to switch. Did they get behind on work? Did they find a limitation in getting the work done in PHP? Did they do it because it was "cool"? Only one of those is acceptable but still not justification imho.
As to the original question, I paid $100 dollars to the project but I didn't have high expectations. I paid for the concept. I paid to get the idea on the map and HOPEFULLY to have someone sit and think about the architecture for a minute. I fully expect to see people take the framework established and develop alternate seeds in other languages.
Once the product was released I had a number of concerns:
* The security is abysmal, it needs a complete audit and someone with real experience here (plus maybe months of work) till it is safe to use
* They didn't seem to have done very much. The UI appeared to have a lot put into it.. but only on the surface, at any depth it became confusing.
I'm afraid that I think they shot themselves in the foot dramatically here. Because they rose to the hype with a pretty poor "product" - so now many supporters are disillusioned with their promise.
It will take a lot of time to create a working system; months at least. This was always going to be the case, but the hype forced them to promise something much sooner. And now it is a "semi-failure".
With luck they can refocus and come back in a few months with a serious product :)
Some people forget that, like Gates, Zuckerberg was actually a pretty good programmer. Its unlikely that Facebook would have gone anywhere had he not been. These Diaspora guys probably aren't as passionate about programming as Zuckerberg was, and thats what you need for a complex project like this. Talent and passion for knocking out tons of high quality code.
Give the money to someone who will use it wisely. There is a clear market opportunity here.
Have you met them and talked programming or is this just hyperbole and conjecture?
They were out at the Web 2.0 Expo Startup Showcase http://blog.web2expo.com/2010/07/get-your-fledgling-company-... and in the conversation I had with them they seemed very passionate about Diaspora the project.
However, technology moves fast and expectations grow each day. I don't think there were that many expectations from Gates or Zuckerberg as much as people expect from these guys. Maybe they'd be better off getting outside help. At some point of time, MS and Fcbk expanded as well. Diaspora needs more involvment (not opensourcey but someone working fulltime on board with them) much sooner than those cases.
Is this built on the caricature presented on "The Social Network" or something?
But anyway, that seems flawed -- there are plenty of products that make it big even though the developers aren't amazing -- simply because it gets the job done.
I realize that Diaspora is still in the early stages of development, but honestly, who in their right mind would use MongoDB and Rails on an app that's being marketed directly to consumers? It's hard enough coaching people through WordPress's trademark 5-minute install process. Can you imagine your aunt Gertrude or little cousin Mordechai trying to deploy a production-ready Rails app?
I was excited about Diaspora, but the work released after months and months of development time is, in my mind, severely lacking. Maybe the beta (if there ever is one) will change my mind?
Additionally, I'm afraid it's going to be to complicated for most users (especially those that use social networks the most). After all, most standard consumers are going to use WordPress.com or Tumblr when they want to start a blog, not roll their own WordPress server or set it up on a hosting account. Average consumers aren't likely to want to host their own social network node either.
The main advantage of Diaspora over Facebook seems to be "you take control of your own data" which isn't easily understood.
It is similar to a company who says they offer an extended warranty for their product, but don't have anyone to actively sell it. Honestly, how many people would buy the extended warranty if there wasn't someone there to scare them into buying it?
The name irks me for some reason, it's so pretentious for a site that's trying to hit the mainstream.
I think facebook has really just hit the peak of what social networks can do and they have so much of the market. Getting all your friends to migrate to another service is just, quite frankly, a waste of time
Maybe you should look into what you are commenting about before commenting.
However, the mainstream media seem to interpret Diaspora as being a Facebook competitor