Is it worth the hassle of moving everything to Diaspora? facebook has been around a while and is not going to fail anytime soon. What are the chances that the guys behind this will just give up or maybe get picked up by some company and drop Diaspora to work on other more lucrative projects?
It already seems like the only people that may use this are the very tech savvy. I am not talking about people that have the latest and greatest phones, but the people that manage servers, netoworks, etc.. I really don't see my parents downloading a copy of Diaspora and installing it on a server just to be able to connect with family like they do with facebook.
Just my two cents, but it seems like they will have to really dummyproof this thing or it will not be widely adopted. Look at Google's Orkut? How many people do you know on Orkut? I think the country with the most users is something like Brazil.
I guess we will find out on 16 Sept after the press and blogs have had a day to mull over Diaspora.
IMHO, the one thing that will kill Diaspora is if the process to get one up and running is not simple, free and fast. I would think the majority of facebook users dno't care how it works and have no desire to learn how to run their own, but focus rather on posting status updates and photos.
I don't think it will beat facebook, but then again I don't believe they are trying to do that. I think they are trying to open the door for options other than facebook.
I will flock to [strike]Diaspora[/strike]Appleseed Project and scriptingly or manually convert my data into a [strike]Diaspora[/strike]Appleseed Project compatible structure/database and then cease regular Facebook (and other proprietary social networking services) usage other than to encourage my friends to follow. However, before I pursue encouragement to my friends who are not developers or even fluent computer users, I would like to additionally contribute towads development to make things possible. I imagine there are many who share the same desire and there will be a lot of offers for developments, patches, forks, etc.
Uhoh, [strike][/strike] doesn't work. Plugin?
Last edited by mizerydearia; 09-12-2010 at 01:35 AM.
Yeah, I'm not sure if it matters if it will "beat" facebook or not. If your social experience requires people and the people you want to communicate with are still on FB, I think you're still going to be stuck using FB. It'll be up to the Diaspora community to develop and grow maybe with some of your old networking contacts and maybe some new ones. IMO we'll all still be using FB while simultaneously shaping our Diaspora experience until/if Diaspora becomes mainstream.
It is not important to me that Diaspora get even close to the same size as facebook. I do hope they take a big bite into the share of facebook users though. The open source community that takes on the task of adding great features and making it simple for the casual user will dictate the success in that area.
Most of the people I want to communicate and share with I think are done with facebook and looking for an alternative that doesn't carry the same sort of dogmatic group think and privacy concerns that facebook has. I once dreamed of sort of an "other net" ... an alternative to www where you wouldn't have to worry about whether or not the cool .com name that is most appropriate to your media project or band has been snapped up. The model I had in mind was basically a peer to peer version of the internet where everyone had their own web pages and rich media hosted and updated primarily on their machines but could be "always on" because everyone took some parallelized share of the host load (like Google server farms do for gmail space), perhaps using a bit torrent like micro sharing system. I reached out to several bright people trying to sort out the efficacy of this sort of thing and no one was even remotely interested.
Fast forward a few years and really this is a very similar concept to what Diaspora is pushing ... peer-based (though I know hosted solutions will also come) node/seed profiles shared and propagated by those in your chosen network.
I am in it for the innovation mainly but it is a great bonus to be able to strip down my facebook profile to nothing (I need an account to keep my fb band page - a necessary evil) and jump ship for my day-to-day social needs. I can't stand facebook as a company and really I am only there because that's where everyone else is. I think a lot of people feel the same way and I am happy to be early to the Diaspora party.
Last edited by jonny colfax; 09-04-2010 at 10:26 AM.
Do you think that once people see that we can move away from the seemingly invincible facebook and the sun will still come up in the morning, that they will be more open to alternatives to the traditional internet as they know it? I can see your idea popping up in a few years as some of these kids start graduating college that have been immersed in the internet their whole lives and introduced to computers at a young age. ICANN and the governments would probably fight it since they would not be able to control it as much.
�If you do not online-enable a game, it could kill you.� - Tony Hawk
DiasporaForum.org
I hope this is the case and I think Diaspora if executed well and expanded aggressively via open source development (as was bit torrent and some other really ground-breaking innovations) may pave the way.I can see your idea popping up in a few years as some of these kids start graduating college that have been immersed in the internet their whole lives and introduced to computers at a young age.
Yes, exactly. I think the point would be to create a more subversive space. There is too much control over some of the major aspects of the internet. On one hand, standardization and registration helps reduce confusion and utter chaos where perhaps there would otherwise be 15 (or 150) cnn.com sites but on the other hand, allowing resale of names created an industry of hording for profit and ensuring that money - not relevancy - controls your venture's internet identity. Beyond that, I completely lost confidence in the registration process when they began forcing people to pay to keep their contact information private rather than making privacy the default standard.ICANN and the governments would probably fight it since they would not be able to control it as much.
WIRED had a great article this month called THE WEB IS DEAD. The gist is that web surfing and visitation of web sites has gone way down while usage of closed systems like facebook or iTunes have gone way up. People appear to be happy to give up some freedom, flexibility, and individuality in order to have something that works predictably and stably, providing for the core needs most people share - like gossiping, bragging, watching/listening to media, and shopping.
I personally still like visiting great web pages and I hope HTML5 helps to revitalize the web.
I hope Diaspora will allow a way to sort of get "off the grid". My prediction is that it could do double-duty - integrate well into the most popular web institutions while also serving as a good platform for private exchange. We'll see.
Ditto, I would like to see the same.
I am going to read the article you mentioned, but here is a link incase anyone else wants to see it
https://www.wired.com/magazine/2010/08/ff_webrip/all/1
I agree that Diaspora doesn't need to (and probably won't) beat Facebook in terms of number of users... But the real question is: What does Diaspora offer its users that is useful? Like the OP states: Who uses Orkut? Orkut existed before FAcebook, and it hasn't caught on.... So what makes a social network appeal to a broad audience? And will Diaspora offer what people want?