An up & coming alternative to facebook?

Forums › Social networks, social media and tools › An up & coming alternative to facebook?

nickd

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#62038 28-May-2010 11:23

So last night I stumbled upon diaspora, a couple of guys with a project to make an open source social network with a focus on privacy. It seems interesting, however, is this just some guys wanting an easy dollar while they are on summer holiday, are they reinventing the wheel or does it have promise?

freitasm

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#335740 28-May-2010 11:27

There are only so much space for "social networks". Facebook and Twitter fill their space. With 400 million people you have to offer a very enticing proposition for people to use it - and "privacy" is not it.

nickd

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#335741 28-May-2010 11:38

Hmm....I wasn't even aware of this part of the forum.

Ragnor

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#335754 28-May-2010 12:21

I think it makes sense to have a open social networking protocol, Facebook and Twitter are huge single points of failure imo.

Also it's always good to have some competition to keep the big players honest.

For a geek it's going to be great to run your own site/service or choose any provider you want to run/host your social networking site/service for you. Then you publish to various other sites (Facebook, Twitter etc) as you see fit.

I can't see the average joe who doesn't even understand what a browser is taking this sort of thing up though.

muppet

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#335770 28-May-2010 13:11

There is heaps of discussion about Diaspora in other parts of the 'web, I'm actually surprised it's only just been raised here just now.

Diaspora, great idea that it is, is still only just that, an idea. I think there's a lot of potential for something like it to work, a distributed Social Network with no single controller. But as others have pointed out they'll need a lot to take on the big already established players.

Even worse is that everyone already knows about them! The websites/protocols that have taken over the world haven't loudly announced themselves before they arrived (maybe Bittorrent? But it had no competitor.) It's the surprise attack that works. As it stands, Facebook can watch Diaspora and pretty much copy anything they do.

I don't think it's a few guys trying to make a quick buck. I think they are genuinely trying to do what they say. I just think being thrust into the spotlight as they have is going to make their huge uphill battle even harder.

Not to distract from the conversation here, but there's heaps of discussion about this on Hacker News if you're really interested in reading or discussing it in depth.

Audiophiles are such twits! They buy such pointless stuff: Gold plated cables, $2000 power cords. Idiots.

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nickd

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#336050 29-May-2010 12:37

I guess the only way I could see it being used is with larger organisations such as a uni, for all the students & staff. But then you would have to convince someone to pay the bill...