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What Happened To Diaspora, the Facebook Killer? It's Complicated
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.'"
> Former fans mockingly dismissed it as 'swiss cheese.'
One has to wonder how cheesy the first few iterations of Facebook would have looked if their source had been open to all.
The only place I ever heard Diaspora even mentioned at all was right here on Slashdot.
#DeleteChrome
By the way, the name, Diaspora, it also sucks. Oh, and I don't have an FB account either but it has a better name.
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And yet, the battle may have been lost before it even began.
No it was lost when G+ came out with circles, which was Diasporas main killer feature.
The second killer feature being able to download all your stuff, which google ALSO does on "your account" "data liberation" page.
Honestly when I first saw G+ circles I though the almighty GOOG had bought out the diaspora devs or something like that.
the team of four young kids with little real-world programming experience
It is/was a kinda-federated intranet scale website, OK? They're not writing a OS, or a compiler, or hand coding machine code. In the olden days, one young kid should have been able to do it, four is a little excessive.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
Is creating an alternative to Facebook a technical problem, or is it more the non-technical side which is more important? Such as making people aware it exists, encouraging people to use it etc. This thing may be great, but nobodys heard of it. What are its supporters doing to make people hear about it? There are people who use facebook who never email, hardly ever surf the web etc.
We are being suckered into an immense data gathering exercise for the sake of a few pages which are "ours".
Perhaps commodification is a better word. I sometimes feel that we have been duped into becoming a product rather than a customer or a user. Worse, this is becoming acceptable for many people.
The thought is disconcerting. After all, what rights do products have? What ramifications does that have for the future? We rely on some misguided sense that these companies or our lawmakers are ethical or reasonable enough to provide safeguards and prevent abuse. That is our only defence, and I have little faith in the competence or ethical integrity of either.
If our personal data is a commodity, as FB and Google and others seem to indicate by their business models, then its only a matter of time before systematic and serious abuses of that data mining become commonplace. Selling fucking personalised ads is the tip of an incredibly large iceberg.
They're not idiots over there at facebook. They took a cue from Microsoft. They know their survival depends on keeping people's data in facebook, and locked-in there. Things go in to facebook, not out. Your site links to facebook, not the other way around.
You would not need facebook if you were easily able to link up with other social networks, or worse yet your facebook friends were able to seamlessly link with your google+/Dispora/Whatever.
I think their biggest problem was setting up a kickstarter page before actually writing a prototype. Had they waited until the prototype was ready before starting the media blitz, they could have been humble about the current state of their code, and been honest about where they want to go. When it comes to software hype, capturing people's imaginations is key. They did that. But they didn't leave themselves any wiggle room. I've been there. Done that kind of thing. I totally feel for them, and what they went through. Everybody has to learn this stuff eventually.
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Post in the subject line, but you also capitalized the "H" in Have?
I hate you.
I honestly forgot about Diaspora until I saw it on Reddit a few weeks ago. It is predominately a techie thing and may never catch on main stream due to its technical and open source nature. Non-tech people won't see its advantages and may see its open source nature as inviting "hackers".
Please don't drive and fiddle with your cellphone.