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Ask HN: What's wrong with Diaspora?

12 points by Joeboy ↗ HN
I've noticed an overwhelmingly negative vibe about Diaspora here. It seems to be widely deemed to be a conclusive failure. This is at odds with my personal experience of it, which is that it works well enough, and many people are interested in switching to it. Among my friends (particularly the non-techie ones) it has a lot more buzz than G+. For a long time I was very much of the opinion that Diaspora was all hype and no visible product, but now it's easy to sign up[1] and start using it I'm wondering what the problem is. Is there some reason I should be discouraging its use?

Some complaints I'm aware of are:

* It's had undeserved hype and funding

* The alpha release had egregious security issues

* It still has some visible bugs

* Its privacy selling point is a bit overblown

* It doesn't have users

At this point none of these seem to me like good enough reasons not to be using or recommending it. Is there something I'm missing?

[1] See https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/wiki/Community-supported-pods for a list of pods you can sign up to. I signed up at http://diasp.org.

10 comments

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more_original
Maybe it's because people don't know that it's now more or less ready to use? I didn't know until just now. I signed up and it looks quite good, only a little undercrowded.
huffer
I second that... Considering the hype from the beginning I would have expected at least some news/updates to surface (here, on reddit, etc.) about it -- so I assumed it was dead.
Joeboy
I think the diaspora guys might be shooting themselves in the foot a bit by making it hard to sign up for their pod (there's a waiting list) and not publicizing the various other public pods.
beatpanda
I think it's great and I've been recommending the shit out of it, I'm just waiting for more of my friends to come over.

I'm beatpanda@joindiaspora.org if anybody wants to add me.

beatpanda
I also have invites.
Joeboy
Cool, but you can get on diaspora via various other public pods without invites or waiting lists. I just signed up at http://diasp.org.
ramurj
ive been inviting people alot too, The absence of chat is keeping some people away, plus how its stranded and undercrowded
runjake
Nobody in my social/family circles use it.
nhangen
Signed up for an invite several months ago, and never got one. I also got tired of "it's coming" emails. As someone that's sent a few of those emails myself, I understand the need to buy time, but IMO they ran out of rope.
Joeboy
I don't know why joindiaspora.com is so reluctant to sign people up. You can sign up at eg. http://diasp.org, which is working now has no waiting list.