Diaspora's Curse - Jason Fried

http://37signals.com/svn/posts/2330-diasporas-curse

by starnix17 • 16 years ago

296 138 16 years ago

sscheper• 16 years ago

He forgot the fourth curse:

"Your thirteen year-old sister will crap her pants when she's told to download a social "node" on her computer in order to tell her friends that Abercrombie is having a sale."

Manfred2• 16 years ago

Not everyone has to run their own node. I believe the idea is that you can have people you trust run a node for you.

But you're right, for most people this will be a big hurdle.

mrvir• 16 years ago

I guess letting users run nodes presents some man-in-the-middle security issues to be solved as well.

_sh2• 16 years ago

Your thirteen-year-old sister's "node" will live exactly where her email lives: on some ISP/hosting co.

Using Diaspora should be no different than "downloading the facebook page to your computer and running it on your browser", for example.

ubernostrum3• 16 years ago

Your thirteen-year-old sister's "node" will live exactly where her email lives: on some ISP/hosting co.

Instead of "on some ISP/hosting co.", you mean to say "Google".

If Diaspora ever takes off -- and the odds are stacked against it -- then it's a very safe bet that Google will simply host nodes for free. Which means Google will have access to all the info they already have on you, plus all the info Facebook would've had.

This does not lead to the Glorious Distributed People's Republic of Privacy.

holdenc2• 16 years ago

The reason people have donated so much is because they are upset with Facebook's new privacy policies.

How diaspora can succeed: do the same thing Facebook does, but fix the privacy.

How diaspora can fail: by making some pie in the sky social networking platform that will elude most non-technical people. Unfortunately, it sounds like it's going this direction.

I truly want to see Diaspora work. And it doesn't have to be complicated...at the moment, all they need is a decent social network (one that's built with the help of a graphic designer) and chances are you'll have at least one new user for everyone who donated.

Lastly, make it easy for people to move from Facebook to Diaspora. Ease of use will be the pass/fail here.

patio112• 16 years ago

How diaspora can succeed

Get everyone I know from high school and college using it and I might sign up, but I don't want to have to send invites, and I also don't want to be invited unless everyone I know is already there.

Square that circle and they win.

jimmyjim• 16 years ago

If someone such as you, a technical person, is unwilling to take the initiative in signing up for it, then it's really just a self-defeating prophecy, isn't it?

My point is, adopting a creed of proactivity is for the good of us all.

jamiequint• 16 years ago

"How diaspora can succeed: do the same thing Facebook does, but fix the privacy."

What is the definition of success here though? A super-niche social network that privacy-geeks use? The idealism is understandable but misguided. These guys won't touch Facebook by trying to make a social network with a feature better at X - in this case privacy - thats not how giants get toppled.

Facebook won social networking, Google won search. Each will be beat by their core business being displaced by something else, not someone coming along and doing what they do incrementally better. (e.g. socially shared links driving down search traffic is Facebook indirectly biting a chunk out of Google's business)

holdenc2• 16 years ago

I disagree here. Facebook did a few things incrementally better than its prior contemporaries. Remember when Friendster and MySpace had more users than Facebook? Facebook won social networking because it essentially fixed a few problems that plagued its competitors. MySpace was/is a mess. And Friendster was too self-serious (forcing you to post a personal photo instead of an avatar) and restrictive. And both MySpace and Friendster got privacy wrong from the get go. One of Facebook's earliest appeals was the privacy it allowed users.

lionshare26• 16 years ago

A Diaspora project management plug-in is a Basecamp killer, and J. Fried (=J. Afraid) knows it. What is Facebook? A central hub. What is Basecamp? a central hub.

He did succeed to kill google chat client to make us pay for Campfire. But it was easy PR against "evil" Google. This time it will not work.

bandushrew2• 16 years ago

LOL

Given that Diaspora has yet to be written, I doubt that J. Fried is particularly quaking in his boots regarding the hypothetical creation of a hypothetical plugin using a hypothetical API to provide a hypothetical service that would hypothetically be so great as to kill Basecamp.

Disclaimer: I dont use basecamp, have never used basecamp and have absolutely no idea why someone would want to kill it.

bkbleikamp• 16 years ago

I think another issue is their solution to the problem is flawed. Most users don't have a desire or the ability to run their own server.

Running a basic application on a web server seems trivial to nerds, but to average users it seems impossible.

Manfred2• 16 years ago

Well, torrents are also rather complicated and people seem to cope with that as long as the software is usable enough. I agree that running a server that's available for 24/7 with enough bandwidth for video and images is a problem.

wmf3• 16 years ago

Running a Unix machine in your pocket also seems impossible—oh wait, 100 million sold you say? You just need to unlearn what you have learned.

ThomPete• 16 years ago

The Unix machine have been packaged in such a way that the user don't know it or care what it is running on. Everyone knows how to buy something.

That seems rather different here where users are asked to do things that in them selves are not obvious. The users don't know how to download a node and the idea that someone you trust is going to run the node for you just isn't a very convincing idea IMHO.

_sh2• 16 years ago

Do you need to run your own mail server because you have an email address?

Diaspora should have a similar model. You can use a hosted node, or one your ISP provides you when you sign up, just like they provide you with an email address.

loup-vaillant6• 16 years ago

> Do you need to run your own mail server because you have an email address?

We don't, but we should, eventually. What you describe is only the first step. The ideal world clearly lies in easy, ubiquitous self hosting.

hartror• 16 years ago

A fair and completely unsurprising analysis, the spotlight is definitely on too early and I will be surprised if they survive it's hard glare. Jason's thoughts on taking money are well documented but I've always disagreed with this as an over generalisation, it depends on the people receiving the money. Certainly the scale that they're aiming at will require mountains of cash and having some early on doesn't have to mean they will get carried away.

And of course there is the fact that the story is the money, not the idea, which is the worst sign of the bunch in my opinion!

andrewvc• 16 years ago

I expect what any reasonable person who just invested $170k in a group of four strangers with vague plans and no proof of concept would expect.

robryan• 16 years ago

To be fair I don't think they were out to raise so much attention, just enough money that they could actually spend there summer on this vs needing alternate employment.

They could turn money down but at this stage they already have the attention and that money could fund years of an open source project instead of having to worry about supporting themselves later to if things work out.

milkshakes• 16 years ago

All these guys did was try to raise enough money to pay rent and food (and barely!). Yeah, the whole world is watching, but they weren't exactly asking for the attention. They just struck a nerve.

andr• 16 years ago

I think their surest way to fail is to do a very close Facebook clone. Let's not forget that those upset by Facebook's privacy are but a vocal minority. Catering for them won't be enough to get everyone to move. For most people Diaspora would be just a harder to use version of Facebook with less people on it.

andrewljohnson2• 16 years ago

This is just echo chamber hacker nonsense. Nothing wrong with a little starter capital.

strlen• 16 years ago

It's not "hacker nonsense". 37signals is generally fairly different in their opinions from most hackers (e.g., I strongly disagree with their opinion that Moore's law means web companies shouldn't wory about scalability: Gene Amdahl may beg to differ).

What Jason is saying is common business sense: don't sell something you haven't built. Build something as you're selling it, iterating on the product and adjusting to customer feedback. When the product gains traction, take external money (if needed and desired) to scale the business.

Facebook already had (measurable) traction _before_ they took VC funding.

andrewljohnson2• 16 years ago

This is not VC funding! This is seed capital... VCs hand out millions, not a couple hundred thousand. I believe in boot-strapping, and I boot-strapped my own start-up, but if these guys can get a small amount of money to work with, it is helpful.

cema• 16 years ago

I paid them a little just to support them. A failed attempt is better than no attempt.

That said, I tend to agree with most of what Jason said. Their pitch is much more sales than substance at this point.

jackowayed• 16 years ago

I agree that they're probably screwed--on top of the normal how-do-you-get-enough-people-to-switch-that-users-get-real-utility-out-of-the-social-network issue, people now expect, by virtue of the fact that they've got $170k and lots of attention, that they have something ready to compete with Facebook by the end of the summer--but I don't think they would have done any better waiting.

By doing it this way, they got to strike while the iron was hot. Right as Open Graph and the dozens of "Facebook is pure evil" posts were fresh in people's minds, they asked for money. With startups, the best time to raise money is when people badly want to give it to you, and it's no different here. If they had waited a few months, not only might they have had trouble paying their living expenses for the summer and their tuition bills in the fall, but they also, had they asked for donations after a summer of getting a crude v1 together, would have had a much harder time getting the money because Facebook privacy concerns wouldn't be as strongly in people's minds as they are now. Do you think they'd get anywhere near $170k with a v1--which would be nowhere near ready to kill Facebook--but in a few months when most people don't care anymore? In fact, it's quite possible that having a crude version 1 today would get them less money. Right now, they're selling nothing but ideas, which are easy for anti-Facebookers to latch onto. If they had a rudimentary implementation, potentially donors would be thinking about all of the ways in which the product sucks, not all of the ways in which it could be great. By having no product to criticize, they get the donors to dream.

And at least this way, they're set financially. They'll still probably fail, but probabilistically, they were going to fail either way. This way, if they do manage to ignore the hype and get a great product built, they'll definitely have money when they need it.

Another way that this does help them is something PG has pointed to--fear of failure. If they were just friends hacking this thing together in their spare time, maybe they would have made some grand statements to a few friends and family members, but there'd be a pretty low barrier to saying, "oh, building something with Facebook's capabilities is extremely hard. And even if we do a decent job, we probably won't get any users. Let's go play video games." But now, they can't give up entirely. They have to at least build something that sort of gets the job done. Thousand of people gave them money to do so, so they have a duty to do it. And millions of people read the articles about Diaspora and will read about it again if they fail. If Diaspora becomes a joke, every potential employer of theirs will think of them as "the guys who failed miserably at building Diaspora." All of a sudden, failure comes with a very high cost.

lionshare26• 16 years ago

Why are they screwed? Where is it written that four probably smart and dedicated guys must fail? Because they will have a few month without financial problems? Because they have momentum and support? really.

It's a nasty post to kill the finance momentum.

Please: J. Fried JUST FIGHTS FUTURE COMPETITION. Facebook is a central hub. Basecamp is a central hub. That's the whole story. A project management plug-in to Diaspora that can freely connect people is a threat to Basecamp.

When Google introduced their free chat client, a full product ready to use, he complained about "evil" (and forced us to pay for campfire). Now they are not evil, than it's the product.

loup-vaillant6• 16 years ago

Err, jackowayed said they are (probably) screwed, despite having momentum, support, fear of failing, and no financial problems. Because the initial odds were really bad.

You may disagree with him about the initial odds, but I think you agree with his main point: the massive funding is good for Diaspora*.

zeemonkee3• 16 years ago

If they did fail miserably, I'd still hire them like a shot - they've shown they've had the chops to try and the initiative to think out of the box. The experience they would get through failure - whether the failure is technical. marketing or finance - would be an invaluable lesson for their future careers, far better than some internship at big company X.

An employer who would negatively judge a teenager on the failure of what is essentially a summer project would be very, very stupid.

mseebach6• 16 years ago

> they've shown they've had the chops to try and the initiative to think out of the box.

Really? Are there any serious geeks that haven't hashed out a basic architecture (napkin-level) for a distributed Facebook-replacement over a beer or some coffee? I know I have, twice. The difference between me and them? A pretty website, a video and (probably the kicker) patronage by the NYT.

I agree that it shouldn't reflect negatively on them, quite the opposite, but are we back to 1998, where a good idea, "out of the box" and CS-grad in the same sentence is a qualification?

runevault• 16 years ago

This post hit the nail on the head and got me thinking about the whole thing again (Diaspora, not the problem they're trying to solve. I already promised myself I wasn't going to jump into that race with however many other groups see the gold mine and are going to chase it).

I'm starting to think this was something one of them through out as an awesome idea, they said hell yeah why not... and then the money REALLY started pouring in, and then the Times showed up... and it's just snowballed.

I wonder how serious they were even planning on being before it got so big.

Mine you, I hope I'm wrong, but it's just a gut feeling I have.

blackguardx• 16 years ago

$170K isn't that crazy. Since when do programmers have to do the whole starving artist routine to get respect? Living close to the edge doesn't make you work any better. If it did, you would have to question companies like Google who give their employees really good benefits.

$170k split four (or more) ways actually doesn't sound like much, especially when you consider their location (NYC), and their massive student debt. NYU isn't a cheap school.

On a personal note, I lived in Harlem on a $24k/yr grad student salary this past year. It was a reasonably comfortable living, but being poor in New York City adds a lot of stresses to life that don't exist elsewhere. Walking around piles of dog shit and trash every day takes its toll after awhile.

I was actually surprised how well I made out, considering I was making the least amount of money I have ever made since age 19 and living in the most expensive city I have ever lived in my life. That being said I could be a lot more comfortable with just a slightly higher income.

lionshare26• 16 years ago

Agreed. They can get more. The whole idea of this nasty post is to say 170K is enough. They should reach a decent first seed round cap

zalew• 16 years ago

Isn't that crazy, but they were aiming for 10k. At least that was official, maybe it was just a teaser, on purpose. Sad is, that they aren't even started and there's already lots of hype and I hope people don't get to the hate phase even before they launch.

I'm totally positive about the concept, but I always thought one should get motivated on his own, start the project, and beg for money to go further. This seems it's done the opposite way - give us the cheese so we start coding - and donating a video with a chalkboard I feel is a bit too much, for the moment.

Still, I'm very curious about this project and wish them best.

hyp3rVigi1ant• 16 years ago

There's a 67 minute video on youtube (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qRTzRAtDujU) where they're introducing the idea (with more details and exploring some possibilities) to a couple people (professors?) at their college and end up showing their very basic prototype. They did this before they created the kickstarter page, raised all this money, and got all this attention.

steveklabnik2• 16 years ago

> Since when do programmers have to do the whole starving artist routine to get respect?

Having money lets you rest on your laurels. They could live off of that money with no work on the project for two years, more if they moved somewhere cheaper.

Would you work harder if you had two years' living expenses in the bank, or if you had to make enough sales to pay rent in two weeks?

> and their massive student debt.

As someone in this position, the answer is easy: deferment. It's really easy when you're making next to no money.

Dysiode• 16 years ago

While the article makes very strong points, it fails to address that Diaspora wasn't seeking attention and merely had attention thrust upon it. Since everyone else seems to be following suit, I'll throw out my two cents worth as well :)

Diaspora needs to be exactly what they said it will be. To do that they need to Ignore Everybody (http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1350292) and stick to their original timeline :)

Lets also not forget that they've actually got some code. That's better than some bloggers seem to realize.

nano81• 16 years ago

I think it's naive to think they weren't seeking attention. It's entirely possible they weren't seeking this level of attention, but they reached out to one person (at least) who wrote a story and caused the snowball to start rolling. If they wanted to be stealthy, they would not be giving interviews to the NYT.

lionshare26• 16 years ago

It's not Jason Fried it's Jason AFRAID.

Because sooner than later we will see plug-ins that enable distributed project management.

As these guys say, we don't need a centralized hub for social network. We also don't need one for projects (Basecamp).

It's the Campfire story again: Than he had an echo against "evil" Google. but what can he say to a few nice guys going open source? If Mr. Fried didn't roll his campaign against google free chat client, we would have a free one instead of paying for campfire. BUT HE WILL USE HIS ALLEGED "GREATER GOOD" VOICE TO ELIMINATE ANY COMPETITION.

bandushrew2• 16 years ago

That really seems like a stretch, whatever you think about Diaspora, every point he made is absolutely right. They have no code, they have 000's of people watching them and they have 4000+ people who believe they should have a say in the development process. If someone asked me up front which I would prefer to work with, 200k in money and 4000+ who all have a 'right' to be involved and their hand on a different piece of the elephant, or neither of the above....The answer would be easy. That equation would be hugely different if I had released something already and those 4000+ people had their expectations driven by that....

lionshare26• 16 years ago

I think it's not. It's not the "product". On the Campfire issue he fought against Google's fully baked and ready product. Since he can't stick "evil" to these guys, he took another PR strategy TO SPOIL FURTHER MONEY IN.

As a "central hub" owner he has a strong interest here.

Diaspora barrier will be for non geeks, to install and configure the "nodes". But since many of his customers are geeks, they will have no trouble to switch.

bartl• 16 years ago

What a Facebook killer needs most, is users. Diaspora has none, as it doesn't yet exist.

There already are other social networks that have plenty of users, but not enough to be a Facebook killer: Orkut (remember that? Apparently still big in Brazil, currently 100 million active users worldwide according to Wikipedia) and NetLog (big in Europe at 65 million users).

No matter how much traction Diaspora gets, I think it cannot possibly beat those.

iamclovin• 16 years ago

I agree with more-or-less with Jason Fried. It's easier to succeed when expectations are low and you exceed expectations. I guess the more money you raise, the more the expectations are, and hence it's difficult to exceed them.

Then again, it's not Diaspora guys' fault that the press seem to have taken to them as saviours of the world.

On a related note, @jacobian has predicted Diaspora to be the new Chandler :) http://twitter.com/jacobian/status/14120142558

shadowsun73• 16 years ago

> Expectations are too high

Jason's third point is, I feel, the strongest. People aren't contributing to Diaspora because of Diaspora, they're contributing as an act against Facebook. The enemy of my enemy is my friend and all that.

I'm not sure if that's a good thing. It's one thing to get in front of a movement and ride that to success. It's another to get in front of a movement that's predicated largely on hate. Diaspora would have to turn this into something positive (Internet users for privacy!) as opposed to just letting the anti-FB vibe run its course.

PS: not related, but here's a thought: why is it necessary to have a special node system? Won't a super-simple, super-private social network work just as well? Facebook's problems isn't so much with the tech as it is with the company philosophy - they seem to want to do everything in their power to screw you over for their benefit. Change the philosophy and Facebook becomes a much harder target to hit.

lionshare26• 16 years ago

nice comment from Fried blog (by Mark Pesce): "Jesus fscking Christ. What these kids need is a little support, not some idiot tearing them down because they suddenly find themselves in exactly the right place at exactly the right time with exactly the right idea. Jealous much? If you want to see Diaspora* succeed, then you’d better work very, very hard coming up with solutions to every one of the very real problems you just raised. Otherwise, you’re just a hater, and you’re only making the problem worse."

rick_20475• 16 years ago

I don't think that the author has ever tried to undermine what diaspora is trying to do in any one word of the short article. What he has tried to tell everyone is what is essentially the best advice those people can ever get. Somebody has to put a reality check on things. I seriously believe that a reality check has to be put on the dream run the diaspora team is getting. Essentially they are getting money just for an idea. And that too, not even a half baked one. I would have been more supportive of them getting around 1700% of there expectations if they had at least a spec out before.

Edit: Changed kids to people as I am younger in intellect and age and it felt silly when I read it again.

ErrantX2• 16 years ago

Jesus fscking Christ. What these kids need is a little support, not some idiot tearing them down because they suddenly find themselves in exactly the right place at exactly the right time with exactly the right idea

Bullshit - what they need is tearing into now (just like this; politely) so they realise that they can't wing it on the good vibe. They gotta produce something good off this money; otherwise it's a potential disaster!

Call it a reality check.

lionshare26• 16 years ago

"It's another to get in front of a movement that's predicated largely on hate"

37 signals, Getting real: "Have an enemy - pick a fight": http://gettingreal.37signals.com/ch02_Have_an_Enemy.php

Apparently Mr. Fried just picked them both. To his behalf, he picked the right one. In a way, Basecamp is "Facebook for project management", and Diaspora distributed paradigm can threaten both.

joubert• 16 years ago

Perhaps the node thing is a question of economics. Instead of a company forking out millions and millions and needing to generate revenue through ads or subs, distributing the cost (running a node) thinly amongst users might make more sense economically. Not sure how they plan on convincing non-geeks to do this though (google native client perhaps?)

lionshare26• 16 years ago

great point

rue• 16 years ago

> Jason's third point is, I feel, the strongest. People aren't contributing to Diaspora because of Diaspora, they're contributing as an act against Facebook.

For a hypothetical open project it might be good to distinguish between "contributing" (code/docs/whatever) and "donating" (money).

loup-vaillant6• 16 years ago

> PS: not related, but here's a thought: why is it necessary to have a special node system? Won't a super-simple, super-private social network work just as well?

No, it won't. Sure, central hubs can be private and simple, but they can't guarantee that they will stay so. Only distributed system could give you such guarantees.

sz• 16 years ago

Does anyone think they were destined to succeed had they not been unexpectedly shoved into the spotlight and showered with cash?

oliverkofoed• 16 years ago

Even if diaspora fails completely, all the investors will have still gotten something else for their money. The fact that diaspora overshoot their initial 10K goal by such a wide margin coupled with all the ensuing publicity the story is getting, is sending a loud and clear signal to Facebook that people are very dissatisfied with the current Facebook direction.

In fact, they're so dissatisfied, that they're willing to put their money where their mouth is, which is a very strong signal to send to Facebook.

Even if diaspora goes nowhere, it might still have a positive impact on Facebook.

rythie• 16 years ago

People are thinking about this wrong.

$170k = 4 young inexperienced people for a year to take on Facebook, WRONG.

This should be thought of an open source project, they should use the $170k to coordinate a large open source project to create this with experts from all over the web. I'm talking 40-80 regular contributors, 400 or more causal contributors. This is perfectly possible given the press they have gotten so far.

They need a leader, it's not clear to me which of the 4 is that leader, but they need one.

Also, whilst their eventual goal might be to take on Facebook, this is 5 years off at least. Facebook spent 2 years only in colleges and universities to get critical mass. Diaspora could try the same or work with niche interests like Ning does or do company social networks like Yammer do, to get started.

lionshare26• 16 years ago

True, true, true.

They will not take FB themselves, but this project will start the underlying infra. The "BitTornet" of social networks. Than we will need the clients, the eco system etc. But it's the first essential step.

And guess what? one of Diaspora's applications will be a distributed project management layer. And the FB of project management, Basecamp, will not like it.

So we better keep supporting it for the remaining 15 days than listening to a the "closed system" competitor(Fried).

DanielBMarkham• 16 years ago

Reality check: most startups fail.

Did Jason give us the reasons this one will fail? Or just make the general prediction we all knew already anyway?

ubernostrum3• 16 years ago

Diaspora's going to do one of two things.

Option one, with approximately 98% probability, is "fail hard". A few geeks will run nodes and brag about it on places like HN, and that'll be it.

Option two is that Diaspora succeeds, which will require some way around making everyone run their own node; basically, some company with the infrastructure to step in and host services for people, for cheap or preferably free. If an existing company -- one which already offers services most people use -- were to do this and make it easy enough, they'd probably end up running a huge percentage of Diaspora.

What sort of company would do that, you ask? Why, the company which already has all the info Facebook doesn't know about you, and would love to get access to the info Facebook does. You know, that search engine with the colorful logo.

lionshare26• 16 years ago

1. Everything in this industry "starts with a few geeks". Including FB and that colorful logo company.

2. Let's do the math: FB valuation is 25B. 2% chances * 25B = Expectation of 500M. In these terms, a 250K kickapp funding is super-super-smart move :)

3. The question is not if Diaspora succeed but if the open source community can produce a distributed solution that will have non-geeky clients. It takes time, sure, but you have got to start somewhere (maybe the Flock social browser should team up as a non-geeky client?)

4. Hosting is no problem. It's like Wordpress hosting, it's done everywhere for cheap (and these are the bad news for J.Fried)

5. Google or FB? I prefer Goog.

swombat• 16 years ago

Actually, iirc Facebook started with college students in Harvard and other US universities, not geeks.

mseebach6• 16 years ago

> What sort of company would do that, you ask? Why, the company which already has all the info Facebook doesn't know about you, and would love to get access to the info Facebook does. You know, that search engine with the colorful logo.

And that's fine. But because they'll commit to integrating into the open standard that Diaspora defines, at any given time, you can take your friends and leave.

If GMail (apps) starts messing with the privacy of my e-mail, or wants me to pay more than I want to, or changes the layout to something I don't find pleasing, instead of joining a group complaining, I can leave them in a heartbeat. The people I exchange emails with won't notice a bit. The promise of Diaspora is giving me that option for social networks.

There will be a GMail, there will be an Exchange server and there will be a buggy open-source self-hosted PHP-app (and many many more) in the Diaspora universe.

lionshare26• 16 years ago

Think Wordpress.

Fried just doesn't want you to have that option for project management. It's not about Diasopora, it's about Basecamp.

plesn• 16 years ago

From what I heared here and there, one of their plans is try to "embed" Facebook, allowing people to view Facebook info or switch to "private" P2P mode when the other one has diaspora that. So it's not either/or.

Concerning hosting, yeah there's google etc, but as they seem to have discussed with Elben Moglen, they will possibly also consider his ideas about self-hosting on small pluggable computers. And yeah, you probably already hava one: your DSL box. Some providers could play a a cool move on this one.

edit: I don't know if they will have the time, but with encrypted replicated data and external data stores, many things are possible. E.g. you could host the most sensible personnal info and links on your box backed up somewhere and have your photos at Flickr.

kree10• 16 years ago

Right. I'm sure a large number Facebook's current users have devices on their networks that are more than capable of hosting an HTTP server (and maybe already do): the aforementioned DSL/cable modems, plus wireless routers, Roku boxes, video game consoles, etc.

Also, why not just host on the home's PC? Look at what the botnets have done. No technical knowledge required, easy installation, automatic upgrades, and no maintenance for the "host" (double meaning intentional).

st3fan• 16 years ago

I think your logic is a little too binary. There is a huge range of other possibilities between a hard 'succeed' or 'fail'. That is how startups work.

wmf3• 16 years ago

Google seems pretty attached to their advertising-subsidized business model; Diaspora hosting might be more likely to come from Amazon with a "consumer" version of EC2. Or Apple could decide to fight Facebook by adding Diaspora to MobileMe, but I think that's a long shot.

ErrantX2• 16 years ago

My issue is this; Diaspora is two things;

- firstly it is a very complex sounding solution (which is great in a way - I love technically interesting ideas/research)

- secondly it's not a direct solution to the problem.

The issue, as I see it, is that Facebook have a stranglehold over the social net. The solution isn't about hosting our own content (that is clearly impractical for the majority of social users). The solution is about splitting the infrastructure between multiple providers - but in a way that allows a fully integrated experience for users.

That way the "industry" will be self regulating (because if a company looks bad people can migrate quickly away from it).

synnik• 16 years ago

Diaspora may or may not succeed. The whole "node" concept turns me off, personally...

I'm more interested in the idea that is could compete with Facebook at all. Facebook has become too big for a small startup to just step up and replace it.

The reason I say this is that startups tend to follow the founders' vision, then get iterated based on customer feedback.

But "replacing Facebook" isn't a solidified enough vision to act upon. The project team would need to first find out what "Facebook" means to the average user. Because, like it or not, the readers of HN are NOT the average FB user. There would need to be some dedicated research done to determine what feature set would even appeal to the masses.

Once that is done, then we can talk solutions and build a team to make it happen.

But trying to point at any extant project and say it is the replacement project... I just don't buy it.

latch• 16 years ago

I generally agree with what the 37 signals guy say, but their view is never the only view.

Sure it might take most people longer to get something up with $150K than with $0K, but that isn't true 100% of the time. VC might be bad for most, but certainly not for all.

The talk in absolutes to get their point across - its a necessary method since everyone else is doing it.

tomlin• 16 years ago

"You want attention after you’re good, not before."

This one simple thing defines success in the majority. I really dig much of Jason Fried's insight.

jakemcgraw• 16 years ago

Give them $25 for a t-shirt, it'll be like a pets.com t-shirt of yesteryear. Seriously though, even if these guys are a total failure, this whole episode shows that, if the conditions are right, open source software w/o a huge corporate entity can have a mass appeal. Exciting times.

Oranj• 16 years ago

Majority of FB users do not know or do not care about threats to their privacy. Diaspora will be percieved as something uber-nerdy. Try talking about "running your own nod" to a girl in a bar.

tszming• 16 years ago

You have to be cruel to be kind.

blhack• 16 years ago

Diaspora's curse is that it is a solving a problem that only exists in the eyes of people who don't need somebody to solve it for them.

Does anyone think my mom or my sisters give a damn about facebook privacy issues? NO! The only people that seem to are the types that come to HN and we all, for the most part, run our own webservers with our own blogs and pictures and soforth anyway.

loup-vaillant6• 16 years ago

When I tell non-technical people that Google is doing semantic analysis on their e-mail, (1) they believe me, and (2) they find that scandalous.

Unfortunately, this is not enough for them to switch. But if setting up and configuring a personal mail server at home took 5 minutes and no help, they would switch.

Now, we need someone to make Eben Moglen's "freedom box", to make is as sleek, as usable, and as cool as the iPhone. Then, people will buy it. Maybe not over privacy concerns, but at least, privacy will become a selling point instead of the major technical hurdle it currently is.

joeyh• 16 years ago

I got an email from my (senior citizen) dad today asking about Diaspora.

j_baker• 16 years ago

When I first saw the title, I tried to figure out how Jason Fried was Diaspora's curse. :-)

physcab• 16 years ago

Expectations for Diaspora are too high? Diaspora has a curse? I got the feeling from Kickstarter that people without expectations give money to a cause. When I donate money to Kiva, I know fully well that that money may never come back to me, and I am 100% ok with that notion.

jorsh• 16 years ago

Diaspora's curse: They don't actually have a working product to show off -- or any product at all. This whole farce has been amazing. I can't believe anyone actually thinks they're going to produce -anything- that can actually be run or used.

sandee• 16 years ago

170K is not just a funding for Diaspora, it is also a SOS to hackers all around for a decentralized social web.

Surely it got many people to read into it and its highly likely some other group will make a version which actually works.

jonathanwallace• 16 years ago

Exactly. Why is it so hard for geeks to see this?

Is it envy?

char• 16 years ago

I completely agree with Jason. The way Diaspora is starting goes against everything I've learned in my experience with startups. Unexperienced hackers raising a ton of money without as much as an MVP to show for it seems like a recipe for disaster. Probabilistically, they will fail, especially without any outside influences or wisdom.

I can only hope these kids have connections with people (and resources, such as PG essays) which can help guide them in making smart decisions. And I hope they listen.

stcredzero• 16 years ago

I think the Diaspora group should consider "outsourcing." Hold a competition to pick 6 projects, which will get $20k each. At the end of the 2nd phase, they should pick the "winners" and integrate their code. The winners get another $20k.

This gets the initial pressure off of them, allows for a large amount of audience participation, and could attract a lot of programming talent to their project.

rsinger9• 16 years ago

Some people have the notion that when you have a good idea, all you need is some money and time in order to be successful. It's not like that. You can have all the money in the world (look at big corps like Microsoft), and you can have great ideas, but unless you can execute, the money and ideas don't matter.

Diaspora's Curse - Jason Fried

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