Release of Diaspora v0.1.0.0
joindiaspora.com
joindiaspora.com
Honestly I think that in the startup community there has been an enormous failure to understand what makes Facebook so popular.
The most important features of Facebook are not the wall, and they're not sharing statuses or links.
The most important features of Facebook, are:
(1) Chat with a strong mobile app- for many people, Facebook chat has replaced personal (as opposed to work) email, texting, AIM, and Google Talk. It is a simple, sure-fire way to be able to contact anyone you know, and this is the single most important feature of Facebook. Does Diaspora have a strong chat? It doesn't have chat at all.
(2) Facebook groups. It is fairly common for an informal friend group to create a Facebook group for communication, or for an entire class of a university or high school to create an incredibly active group. Most universities have varying groups for varying purposes.
(3) Facebook events. It is common on college campuses for fraternity events and other student activities to be advertised through a Facebook event, and anyone who doesn't get invited to these events might feel out of the loop. Many informal invitations to parties between friends are also sent through Facebook events.
(4) The user's information page. Immediately upon friending someone, you are generally able to discover their religion, their politics, their interests, and, most importantly, their relationship status. In this way, Facebook is a very important tool on both the dating and friend scene for young people.
And, social networks like Google+ and Diaspora have utterly failed to properly address these features. Google+ took months to create events and groups, and honestly now the interface is so cluttered and clunky that I don't think it will ever be accessible to the basic user in its current form. Diaspora has utterly failed to implement any of these features.
Young people want a social network where they can quickly discover what kind of person each other are and what their social situation is, share events and groups with each other, and chat with each other, especially on mobile. Being able to upload photos is also important, but sharing statuses and links is probably the least important feature. A social network which effectively implements all of these in a minimalist, privacy aware way, would without a doubt succeed.
(0) photos
Not trying to be quick witted here, it's my belief that's what's FB's core is about --- photos and their link to a (genuine) user profile.
It of cause also has everything to do with the network effect. Now if you want to know why Facebook got successful originally that has everything to do with spreading from a small, but well-connected, influential group.
Disclaimer: I used to work for a major European social network, so I know at least partially what I am talking about.
EDIT: Also, making a social network scale is much more difficult then you would think. That is why Friendster failed and this is also part of the reason why we (hyves.nl) failed. Our site was notorious for being slow and when we finally got the problem under control, we already had a bad reputation with the in-crowd. Facebook had both an excellent technical team and the advantage of starting of in a half-open beta.
Diaspora wanted to make an app so that servers can communicate between each others. There are already tons of chat protocols, creating another one would be stupid. diaspora would not host anything, while facebook make both the app and the hosting, and keeps the data.
Facebook also failed to implement some sort of craigslist, which is something that would really serve a big purpose for people in general (advertise for any sort of stuff, jobs, dating, help needed, local announcements...). I don't understand why they don't do that.
> I have never thought the Diaspora project would succeed, because it's the social network nobody wants.
Diaspora was not created to be wanted, diaspora was created so that users can care a little more about their data. Facebook makes people share data that the marketers try to get. People don't really care about those issues, and investors would not fund something like diaspora. So don't talk about investors and users like they're the same people. Currently there are no technology to make people keep the control over their data and use them with something like facebook. If the tech was there and it was as appealing as facebook, it would be used.
Which is the stupid part of the whole thing. If nobody wants it, that uses can care "a little more" about their data is immaterial because nobody's using it.
"If" the tech was there--who cares about "the tech", really? Privacy nerds aren't numerous enough to drive a social network. If you want people to buy into what is (not what should or should not be, what is) a niche concern, you need to cater to their needs too.
The problem with facebook, is that devs can't access the data directly, but users can. It's also an API wall for developers who might have an idea and join the party. The only people to decide what new thing to do and experiment are the people at facebook. It's kinda odd, because the internet is supposed to be an open thing. They have this huge database of users, and all I see is some strange smartphone home app and some homepage redesigns, nothing really new since the website release. I mean as a tech, chatting is not a new thing, facebook just created another chatting protocol. People just chat using facebook instead, instead of sharing their AIM or MSN.
That's why diaspora is cool, at least nobody has real direct authority on your data except the users, or at least it diminishes the link between the host and the user. It's more on the dev side.
What sucks, is that the only real standard thing on the web is the mail. It's the backbone of online identity, it's still there. What can't we do the same for web applications ? The web was not meant for applications of the scale of facebook. Maybe we need finer, grainier ways of exchanging social data. Diaspora was not only about privacy issues, it also wanted to show people maybe there are other things to do with social network than just... commenting pics, chatting and joining groups about whatever thing.
And seriously, facebook is a success because it appealed to basic stuff like this. Why can't some programmers have the ambition of making other things with social networking, and not being called stupid for trying so ?
I mean if a guy Zuckerberg did not put a little effort, there would never have been facebook. I heard a former diaspora dev killed himself. That's not towards success, but nobody really cares either. It's like wanting innovation is a sin or something.
Facebook introduced Marketplace in 2007: https://blog.facebook.com/blog.php?post=2383962130
Anyways facebook is really an ass, it did not let me login because I tried to from a public wifi, even by resetting my password with my email, I had to try it on an old account. They are so many phishing on facebook it's not even funny.
I'm sure zuckerberg is laughing his ass off when he's surrounded by all the salesmen type who wants to do this and that with facebook. I wish he could just quit facebook asap and try to make new projects. Or maybe he's totally fine with it, but I doubt he's thinking the site really evolved at all in terms of features.
All that facebook was is a privacy outrage, bad hopes and huge datacenters, and a lost opportunity to work with google. And also "mom! don't comment on my wall!". And classmates bullying each other. And happy marketers analysing huge blobs of data.
Diaspora is like email or Jabber - one can have an account anywhere and communicate with everyone.
I thought that Diaspora would be attractive for large news portals (those all kind of news portals - from bussiness to gossips). They would be able to create social network, as they used to offer free email accounts. This would be attractive for users since they can communicate with people who prefer other portals.
Apparently it does not work that way, portals place everywhere like buttons or adopt FB comments. Kind of strange since one day Facebook might start charging for that.
Different people use the service in different ways. Who would have thought 1.11 billion people are different from each other? Crazy how that works huh?
1) Contact list. Facebook IS the address book. And that's what people use it for.
2) Pictures. People like to creep their friends to see how they've changed over time, and to judge people.
As for Facebook connecting with Harvard students was one purpose but more than that it was "Relationship Status" that gave them instant growth. Everyone was curious & everyone signed up! This resulted in network effect.
Due to Duke Nukem 3D's success, they had too much funding and thus was trying to always incorporate the latest and greatest in game development. Once they were nearing completion, a better engine would be released, and so they would start over from scratch. [0]
The original team behind Diaspora only asked for a little bit of money so they could get by while they spent their time working on it. Instead, they got too much money and recognition. Instead of delivering something half-baked, they drew it out and delivered something stale. The product they have now could have been what they delivered years ago, and years later (now), it could have been a successful competitor.
[0] I forgot what article I read which was really interesting and would have preferred to link to, but alas this will have to do: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Development_of_Duke_Nukem_Forev...
http://www.wired.com/magazine/2009/12/fail_duke_nukem/all/
Great article btw.
Quote:
> But because the technology kept getting better, Broussard was on a treadmill. He’d see a new game with a flashy graphics technique and demand the effect be incorporated into Duke Nukem Forever. “One day George started pushing for snow levels,” recalls a developer who worked on Duke Nukem Forever for several years starting in 2000. Why? “He had seen The Thing” — a new game based on the horror movie of the same name, set in the snowbound Antarctic — “and he wanted it.” The staff developed a running joke: If a new title comes out, don’t let George see it. When the influential shoot-’em-up Half-Life debuted in 1998, it opened with a famously interactive narrative sequence in which the player begins his workday in a laboratory, overhearing a coworker’s conversation that slowly sets a mood of dread. The day after Broussard played it, an employee told me, the cofounder walked into the office saying, “Oh my God, we have to have that in Duke Nukem Forever.”
Edit: argh, at-fates-hands beat me to it.
It’s not the job of the artist to give the audience what the audience wants. If the audience knew what they needed, then they wouldn’t be the audience. They would be the artists. It is the job of artists to give the audience what they need.
- Alan Moore ( http://intellectual-thoughts.com/Alan%20Moore%20Quote.htm )
Similar thing happened with Google+. I remember my non-techie friends wanting to get in, but it took weeks for invites to open up until people didn't care anymore.
The lesson in all this: when you have hype, DELIVER THE PRODUCT.
Not only it was late, it was an utter disappointment. Now, I use Facebook mainly for its Chat - both on mobile and desktop.
Right, today you don't. But for the first several months you did.
A couple reasons I've heard/seen:
* Lots of folks are more trusting of Google with their data than they are of Facebook
* Somewhat related to the above, circle management is a lot easier to get/use than Facebook's groups, and privacy management tends to be easier on G+ as a result
* Facebook makes terrible mobile applications and Google+ has the nicest mobile client for a social networking siteThey've become too smart to lose their place as #1.
You don't believe that'll last forever, do you?
Facebook can innovate until the wee hours of the morning, but if a significant social group (I'm thinking young people, but I suppose it doesn't have to be) goes with another platform simply for fashion reasons, Facebook could slowly die off as users migrate away.
What do these people all have in common besides a need for food, water, and shelter? Facebook.
Crazy isn't it?
So that's why I don't think a couple million people leaving will affect the company in any way shape or form.
Right now the data is down. It looks temporarily. Keep an eye on the site.
I have barely any contacts there whom I know personally or knew before I joined Diaspora. Still I find Diaspora conversations with many different users engaging and don't see it as a black hole by any means.
You are trying to compare it to Facebook, which is wrong. Massive user base of Facebook makes chances of finding familiar contacts there way higher. You can't expect the same thing in Diaspora which is a very young network. I see Diaspora as a place for conversations and ideas, not as a place to find people whom you already know from before. If you approach it the right way - you get a lot out of it.
Also, you have to master using hashtags if you want to have any meaningful feedback from Diaspora. Using it like Facebook will result exactly in black hole experience you described. So try changing your mindset when using it. Diaspora is not a Facebook clone.
It would be so much easier to reason about version numbers if everyone would stick to Semantic Versioning[0].
[0]: http://semver.org/
Diaspora as it has been, is centralized, and doesn't seem to be anything but a smaller, crappier Facebook.
Friendica does what Diaspora was supposed to do, and well, and can integrate with the Facebook API and download your personal Facebook feed into your Friendica feed.
But if you were after a social network that is completely decentralised i.e. no servers, take a look at Nightweb. http://nightweb.net/
Diaspora is as much decentralized, as many pods participate in it. There are many single user pods which demonstrates its decentralization pretty well. So your statement above is false. I'd compare it to federated XMPP network - there are major servers with many users, and there are single user servers as well.
Having a chat is not really the highest priority, since there are tons of federated XMPP servers around already, and standalone XMPP clients that are light years better and feature rich than any possible web UI. But having web UI for chat as a convenience is still useful and attractive, so see the discussion here about adding this feature:
Is there some sort of roadmap somewhere? I could not find one.