Diaspora celebrates one year as a community project

Re:Diaspora celebrates one year as a community project by dvt on Tuesday August 27, 2013 @04:15AM (#6282145)

Maybe I'm guilty of bitching about it (although this is the first time I've ever publicly wrote anything about Diaspora), but I just think that the ship has sailed. To successfully disrupt social media, you need to hit hard and fast to counteract the chicken-egg problem.

Even if Diaspora ends up being an amazing service (in the next 1-2 years), I won't be able to care because my friends aren't on it. And no one else will care because Diaspora hasn't been in the news for years.

Edit: and let me just say that when compared to Zuckerberg, the Diaspora team had a significant head start. A 200k seed and great news coverage beats the hell out of some kid starting a semi-dating site for Harvard and then trying to compete with the (hugely popular) MySpace.

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Re:Diaspora celebrates one year as a community project by melling on Tuesday August 27, 2013 @04:41AM (#6282227)

Yes, I tend to agree with you. From my vantage point on the sidelines it all seems so easy. I guess maybe someday we'll both take that huge step and try to build something big then we'll realize how much work and luck it takes to hit it big.

For now, it's so much easier to not do anything but provide our critique on the work of others.

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Re:Diaspora celebrates one year as a community project by dvt on Tuesday August 27, 2013 @04:55AM (#6282284)

Note that I wasn't criticizing anything (or any one) in particular, just observing the situation Diaspora finds itself in. There's no doubt in my mind that the Diaspora team did their best and their efforts are appreciated by myself and many others.

I only expressed my melancholy given that Diaspora didn't catch on even though it had a very promising start. It's also quite sad that I still have to use Facebook (to keep in touch with friends, get invitations to events, etc.) even though I know that my rights are infringed on a regular basis.

I've founded and co-founded several start-ups myself and I know that failing sucks and that it's (very) hard to succeed. But to argue that the Diaspora guys were just "another" run-of-the-mill basement start-up is not fair. They had a $200k head start and significant media coverage before they wrote one line of code.

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Re:Diaspora celebrates one year as a community project by telephonetemp on Tuesday August 27, 2013 @06:41AM (#6282612)

>They had a $200k head start and significant media coverage before they wrote one line of code.

Could it be that they concentrated too much on the product early on?

Let's not forget that they also lost a founder a year into the project.

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