It's sad, but (relative) newness is a pretty big feature; it gets attention, and attention gets users.

The web has no attention span. You're either brand-new and hyped beyond realism, or ancient and boring.

On the one hand, I get that. On the other hand, many of the people who frequent the site where this is getting prominence use Vim, which is (admittedly indirectly, via vi) a 30-year-old product at this point. I'd hope that we could rise above newness when appropriate.

Diaspora:Facebook::StatusNet:Twitter

At least near as I can tell without signing up.

Not really. StatusNet has (private, if desired) groups, photo uploads, events, URL sharing, and (on a local install, not on identi.ca) arbitrary-length status updates. I guess it's closer to the defunct Pownce than either Twitter or Facebook, but that puts them closer to Facebook than Twitter at this point in the game.

> StatusNet ... already has a large number of users (e.g. on identi.ca)

I know a tiny number of geeks who are on identi.ca, and a small but larger number of people including both geeks and non-geeks on Diaspora. Maybe I'm atypical?

There's also the Appleseed Project, which also predates Diaspora.

http://appleseedproject.org