What Happened To Diaspora, the Facebook Killer? It's Complicated 215
pigrabbitbear writes "Created by four New York University students, Diaspora tried to destroy the notion that one social network could completely dominate the web. Diaspora – 'the privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all distributed open source social network,' as described on their Kickstarter page – offered what seemed like the perfect antidote to Zuckerbergian tyranny. The New York Times quickly got wind. Tired of being bullied, technologists rallied behind the burgeoning startup spectacle, transforming what began as a fun project into a political movement. Before a single line of code had been written, Diaspora was a sensation. Its anti-establishment rallying cry and garage hacker ethos earned it kudos from across an Internet eager for signs of life among a generation grown addicted to status updates. And yet, the battle may have been lost before it even began. Beyond the difficulty of actually executing a project of this scope and magnitude, the team of four young kids with little real-world programming experience found themselves crushed under the weight of expectation. Even before they had tried to produce an actual product, bloggers, technologists and open-source geeks everywhere were already looking to them to save the world from tyranny and oppression. Not surprisingly, the first release, on September 15, 2010 was a public disaster, mainly for its bugs and security holes. Former fans mockingly dismissed it as 'swiss cheese.'"
LiberTree (Score:5, Interesting)
Diaspora has spawned other projects that attempt to carry on and refine the original goals. LiberTree [libertreeproject.org] is one of them, for instance. Just because the original team didn't succeed brilliantly doesn't mean that the original goals weren't worthy or attainable.
This isn't that hard to explain.. (Score:5, Interesting)
You need a good mix of introverts and extroverts in an online community. Linkedin has the introverts. Facebook has the Extroverts. Disaspore needs to define who their audience is before they build out the technology. Technology is nothing without the right people.
Re:Get with the times (Score:5, Interesting)
I use Diaspora. I thought -- and think -- it's eerie just how much G+ looked like diaspora, and to some extent still does. They're both working off the same mindset about how networking should function. But once G+ came up, activity in my diaspora circles dropped to a standstill. It appears to me that most all the people who would use diaspora chose to spend their limited time on G+ because of the networking effect.
Re:Beyond Facebook? (Score:5, Interesting)
A serious misstep by the market leader leaves the market open for someone new. Pandas in WoW for example has had millions of WoW players looking for anything that's almost as good, but without pandas. Unfortunately SWTOR was a trainwreck and Guildwars 2 is a very different game (and nothing else has survived long enough to match them).
But I would say Call of Duty, Battlefield and Halo have all managed to find successful space for themselves in the FPS market.
With facebook the problem is getting marginal users to migrate. That friend who isn't tech savvy at all and doesn't know what google plus is or how it's like facebook isn't going to change. But because it's social there's nothing you can do to leave if the people you want to talk to won't leave too. I had someone yesterday try and tell me that the physical keyboard on a blackberry was the key to their stock price rebounding... because some people don't understand technology, at all, getting her off a blackberry is seemingly impossible, just as getting those friends who know nothing about privacy off facebook is impossible. With a social product you're kinda latched to the people who won't leave, even if something else is better.
For facebook their major misstep is going to be privacy. For those of us who are techies it *is* privacy, but facebook is going to end up doing something so catastrophically stupid that all the non tech savvy people are going to panic - or they're going to do subtle things with privacy that regulators are going to catch on to and dry up their revenue stream. Whether or not anyone else is well position to take their user base is hard to say, with myspace I think it was music and allowing you to make your page look like you were on an acid trip, but google plus and diaspora and twitter and everyone else trying to be the next big thing need a polished product to stuff in peoples faces the moment Zuck does something everyone can understand as stupid.
Also, while no one really succeeded in taking down the iPod directly cell phones have wiped out a huge portion the portable music player market by being better and more functional, and are essentially iPod killers. Trying to out iPod the iPod, I agree, not a great plan, nor is trying to out WoW WoW or out Facebook Facebook, that's where I think someone who sees a feature for a product for when facebook really missteps will do well.
Too complex (Score:5, Interesting)
Apparently, you must join a 'pod'. What is a pod, what are the differences between Pod A and Pod B, do I have to join the same Pod as my known friends, can I contact people in other Pods?
Dunno.
Input textboxes that don't 'act' like textboxes.
Confusing uptime stats. (Is this Pod good or bad?) Do I care?
If you actually want people, yo must make the initial signup dead easy. If all you want is a developer wankfest, well, I guess you have that. Actual users, not so much.
Re:Fondue party! (Score:3, Interesting)
My theory of the problem is that a walled garden will always provide at least a little smoother experience than a decentralized, open, free one. Thus usenet gave way to moderated web forums, decentralized email largely gave way to centralized webmail providers and twitter, home pages gave way to myspace/facebook, and beowulf clusters gave way to EC2. Open standards and decentralized implementations are losing ground all around.
Re:Technical Capabilities vs. Social Critical Mass (Score:5, Interesting)
You missed the early phase of Facebook when it was cool because it was only for colleges, had a clean layout (unlike the ugly pages people frequently had for MySpace). It was exclusive and pretty.
This Is A Nasty Post, Feel Free Not To Read It (Score:4, Interesting)
I have been programming a long time. I know how much work and how hard it is to make even something decent, but ordinary.
I have to admit that I was offended by the hubris of the original Diaspora group. That some college kids, with no real world programming experience who haven't even completed their educations yet were going to pull something like that off.
To be fair, I am still offended by Mark Zuckerberg's existence, that an ignoramus in his mid 20s who hasn't finished growing up is where he is.
I saw both of these contributing to the bullshit expectations bosses and others have that programmers can just "whip out" something nice, useful, reliable, interesting, etc.
Okay, I ranted my ugly rant.
I wish the kids from Diaspora the best. Their heart was in the right place. They can feel good knowing that they stood up to Zuckerberg, which somewhere along the lines will likely inspire others to do the same. It is also much better to try and fail, then never to try. They will have no regrets, be happier and enjoy victories other people will not for not having given it a shot.