Poll: Are you excited by Diaspora?
Based on tav's post: http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1759330
21 comments
A distributed data exchange system with everyone running their own servers will never get anywhere, look at what a terrible failure email was. </sarcasm>
Far, far too early to tell frankly. The pace of development at the moment is frenetic, when things start stabilising then we'll see whether it swims or sinks. I am however hopeful, if it gets any traction at all it stands to become a platform on which a panopoly of awesome things could be built, free from the limitations of the monetise-your-personal-life motivation of Facebook.
Far, far too early to tell frankly. The pace of development at the moment is frenetic, when things start stabilising then we'll see whether it swims or sinks. I am however hopeful, if it gets any traction at all it stands to become a platform on which a panopoly of awesome things could be built, free from the limitations of the monetise-your-personal-life motivation of Facebook.
The other day I thought that maybe building a social network on top of email would not be such a bad idea. Would it scale?
Probably. But what advantages would that give over Diaspora using XMPP?
There might be a broader base of deployed email servers. It is easy to get an email account somewhere, and also easy to host your own email server.
EMail might have been stress tested more, because of all the spam mail. I am not sure how common it is for XMPP to spread hundreds of messages per user in a short amount of time.
EMail might have been stress tested more, because of all the spam mail. I am not sure how common it is for XMPP to spread hundreds of messages per user in a short amount of time.
It depends on how you do it. If you're clumsy about privacy and UI, you might just make the next Google Buzz.
Email is not made for finding other people. The same problem exists with Diaspora.
There is no search to find people on other networks.
There is no search to find people on other networks.
There's always Facebook and LinkedIn. I suspect Diaspora users will just use those like address books, at least at first. Even if Diaspora never supplants Facebook, it will be a good thing as an alternative.
We have real life contacts, don't forget that. That will help a lot.
Real world contact helps the problem, but it doesn't solve the problem.
Fairly certain google would make it fairly easy, if Diaspora ever takes off.
It's a bad sign for them that the result here is overwhelming ambivalence. The sample here is strongly biased toward people who care about the issues Diaspora was invented to address. The greater public would almost undoubtedly be far more ambivalent.
I would say people here probably understand the issues better, but that the greater public if anything cares more. My "greater public" friends do anyway.
Lots of people here respect Facebook's success, while the greater public resents it. Lots of people here regard monetization as the primary arbiter of value, while the general public likes the idea of "philanthropic" projects.
I'm not actually sure if "caring" is particularly relevant though. Nobody "cared" about Facebook a few years ago. People joined Facebook because the people they wanted to hang out with were there, and the people they didn't want to hang out with weren't.
Lots of people here respect Facebook's success, while the greater public resents it. Lots of people here regard monetization as the primary arbiter of value, while the general public likes the idea of "philanthropic" projects.
I'm not actually sure if "caring" is particularly relevant though. Nobody "cared" about Facebook a few years ago. People joined Facebook because the people they wanted to hang out with were there, and the people they didn't want to hang out with weren't.
The issues aren't success or philanthropy. It's about privacy, control over your own data, etc. This audience cares a lot about that, normal people don't ever think about it. It would never occur to my dad that Facebook having his private info might be a bad thing.
Sorry, I replied once already but I've decided I want another go.
> It's about privacy, control over your own data, etc. This audience cares a lot about that
I don't share your impression of this audience. It seems to me this audience largely thinks access to other people's data is awesome, can't wait to make money off it, and thinks dissenters are awkward, time-wasting Luddites. That's a rather broad and unflattering characterization, but it represents my general impression better than "This audience cares a lot about privacy". Nobody should take this personally btw - clearly some people here genuinely care a lot. I'm part of this audience too.
> It's about privacy, control over your own data, etc. This audience cares a lot about that
I don't share your impression of this audience. It seems to me this audience largely thinks access to other people's data is awesome, can't wait to make money off it, and thinks dissenters are awkward, time-wasting Luddites. That's a rather broad and unflattering characterization, but it represents my general impression better than "This audience cares a lot about privacy". Nobody should take this personally btw - clearly some people here genuinely care a lot. I'm part of this audience too.
I think this will change. As the promiscuity of personal data rockets, it will start to impact visibly on people's lives, and they will start caring. </ball type="crystal">
Meta: In a snobbish way, I find it very satisfying that the poll was constructed using, "Couldn't care less," as option three. It's ridiculous how often people say, "I could care less," when they mean the converse.
The "could care less" phrasing makes sense if interpreted sarcastically. Imagine "I suppose I could care even less <eyeroll>". This article is rather illuminating: http://www.worldwidewords.org/qa/qa-ico1.htm
"I am being ironical" -- Robin Williams
He killed in a standup routine and had the crowd laughing hard, but then he shrugged it off in the end and said "just kidding, I am being ironical", and the crowd giggled, slightly less enthusiastic (like he broke character.)
I couldn't believe it! The entire audience missed the icing. That was the money. FATALITY. Absolutely amazing, and no one got it.
:-|
He killed in a standup routine and had the crowd laughing hard, but then he shrugged it off in the end and said "just kidding, I am being ironical", and the crowd giggled, slightly less enthusiastic (like he broke character.)
I couldn't believe it! The entire audience missed the icing. That was the money. FATALITY. Absolutely amazing, and no one got it.
:-|
Yeah, I don't get it either :/ What was it?
The correct phrase is "I am being ironic", not ironical.
Ahem!
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ironical
Words grow quicker than we can catalog them, and die preserved on paper.
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ironical
Words grow quicker than we can catalog them, and die preserved on paper.
Hmm, it's odd, it sounds perfectly acceptable to me. I'd never have guessed it's not used, maybe because it's "ειρωνικός" in Greek, which would accept the -ical suffix (like "λογικός" - logical (and not "logic")).
TL;DR: English is a second language :P
TL;DR: English is a second language :P
Agreed. (Thanks for the link.) However, I don't think people are aware of the distinction; I think it's just a parroted meme.
You are in the very good company of David Mitchell
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/video/2010/may/20/la...
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/video/2010/may/20/la...
All we really need is facebook without the crap, I'm not sure if it is possible to do that but if someone ever launches a facebook competitor with an ironclad privacy policy that they will guarantee they won't 'change on the fly' you can count me in.
The notion of "another social network" doesn't really excite me at all. That being said, I do like the approach they're taking and if everyone just sat on their asses and didn't challenge the big guys, things would never change. The security flaws and the like from the alpha release (or was it beta?) disappoint me a bit too and I wonder how long it will take to have a viable product that can compete with Facebook and if they're capable. Overall, though, I think new social networks need to fill some sort of niche to be successful and I only see Diaspora as an easier to control general network. Not enough of a reason to switch from Fbook or get excited, at least not this early.
I've noticed that a really bad idea on Craigslist, etc often sounds like, "It will be like Facebook, but for X" where X is some group.
With Diaspora I always felt like they were saying, "It will be like Facebook, but for those who don't use Facebook"
With Diaspora I always felt like they were saying, "It will be like Facebook, but for those who don't use Facebook"
I think it's an impressive piece of work (even with the security bugs in the first version - no software is free of bugs). I'm more interested in what others build on top of it, expand it, etc.
I want a distributed social network, I just don't have high hopes for Diaspora.
Two big challenges: making it work technically, and getting people to switch.
Two big challenges: making it work technically, and getting people to switch.
Question: Why did LinkedIn succeed in the face of MySpace and Facebook?
I don't think it's necessarily a matter of getting people to completely switch.
I don't think it's necessarily a matter of getting people to completely switch.
i think the important thing to look at here is the change to allow users to own and control their own data.
i see that as inevitable.
now whether that takes 1, 5, 10, or 20 years for consumers to demand, only time will tell.
i see that as inevitable.
now whether that takes 1, 5, 10, or 20 years for consumers to demand, only time will tell.
Technically, I don't see social networking as an interesting concept or challenge. It's all about the network effect and I'll gladly follow like a sheep to the next Facebook, whether it's open or not, if my friends are there.
At first the only thing I saw driving it was an overhyped distrust for Facebook and an overestimated 'hands-on' group of super-users. But another context occurred to me recently, which is that institutions like churches could probably make great use of Diaspora. There you have the degree of trust necessary and an already proactive community - I can see them getting all hip and getting the youngsters to run a Diaspora server for the church. The key is marketing it to the right communities/institutions in my opinion.
I thought the future was going to look like the metaverse from snowcrash, not a distributed version of twitter or facebook. So yes I am disappointed but in a more general sense.
Diaspora is going to be those burbclaves, just online instead of in real life.
I deleted my Facebook account over a year and a half ago, and honestly I miss it, not enough to want to trust them again, but enough to want SOMETHING to fill the gap. I'm excited that someone out there is building an alternative, is it Dispora? Probably not, just speaking from a statistical sense, I think they've made progress, but I'm still excited because even if they fail some other hacker group will make this happen.
Disappointed, because it's the protocol that counts, and they should be refining and promoting that over any particular implementation. Especially a toy Ruby implementation. Ruby is ok for server-centric deployment, but not so great for desktop/mobile deployments.
I wanted to see a p2p, NAT traversing, auto-discovering, auto-federating mesh of a social network.
I wanted to see a p2p, NAT traversing, auto-discovering, auto-federating mesh of a social network.
I'm curious how Diaspora applying and being accepted into YC would effect the mass ambivalence.
I look forward to it providing many opportunities for satirical comedy similar to cuil.
I wouldn't say I was excited, but that we'll just have to wait and see how it turns out. If a year or two from now it's abandoned and there are still no good open source Facebook competitors then I'll be disappointed.
We need a 5th option: "I was fooled into donating money"
It doesn't have the killer feature I'm interested in: flirting with cute girls.