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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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")).
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.
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.
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">
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.
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.
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.
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 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.
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.
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.
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[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 95.5 ms ] threadFar, 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.
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.
There is no search to find people on other networks.
Two big challenges: making it work technically, and getting people to switch.
I don't think it's necessarily a matter of getting people to completely switch.
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.
:-|
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/ironical
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=ironical
Words grow quicker than we can catalog them, and die preserved on paper.
TL;DR: English is a second language :P
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/video/2010/may/20/la...
i see that as inevitable.
now whether that takes 1, 5, 10, or 20 years for consumers to demand, only time will tell.
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.
> 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.
With Diaspora I always felt like they were saying, "It will be like Facebook, but for those who don't use Facebook"
4 Months or whatever for 4 (?) people to make that? And rip UI off Facebook?
Please, moving along. But I hope those who donated, will get their CD copy!
P.S the actual real time distribution, is borrowed from another author; they had to basically:
1. Take Facebook's UI 2. Plug in another dudes code for core functionality 3. Write simple controller and views
I wanted to see a p2p, NAT traversing, auto-discovering, auto-federating mesh of a social network.