I have never thought the Diaspora project would succeed, because it's the social network nobody wants.
Honestly I think that in the startup community there has been an enormous failure to understand what makes Facebook so popular.
The most important features of Facebook are not the wall, and they're not sharing statuses or links.
The most important features of Facebook, are:
(1) Chat with a strong mobile app- for many people, Facebook chat has replaced personal (as opposed to work) email, texting, AIM, and Google Talk. It is a simple, sure-fire way to be able to contact anyone you know, and this is the single most important feature of Facebook. Does Diaspora have a strong chat? It doesn't have chat at all.
(2) Facebook groups. It is fairly common for an informal friend group to create a Facebook group for communication, or for an entire class of a university or high school to create an incredibly active group. Most universities have varying groups for varying purposes.
(3) Facebook events. It is common on college campuses for fraternity events and other student activities to be advertised through a Facebook event, and anyone who doesn't get invited to these events might feel out of the loop. Many informal invitations to parties between friends are also sent through Facebook events.
(4) The user's information page. Immediately upon friending someone, you are generally able to discover their religion, their politics, their interests, and, most importantly, their relationship status. In this way, Facebook is a very important tool on both the dating and friend scene for young people.
And, social networks like Google+ and Diaspora have utterly failed to properly address these features. Google+ took months to create events and groups, and honestly now the interface is so cluttered and clunky that I don't think it will ever be accessible to the basic user in its current form. Diaspora has utterly failed to implement any of these features.
Young people want a social network where they can quickly discover what kind of person each other are and what their social situation is, share events and groups with each other, and chat with each other, especially on mobile. Being able to upload photos is also important, but sharing statuses and links is probably the least important feature. A social network which effectively implements all of these in a minimalist, privacy aware way, would without a doubt succeed.
What makes Facebook successful is exactly the same as what makes HackerNews successful. It is a combination of the illusion of social recognition (getting liked/upvoted) and a variable reward schedule (you never know if there is something new) that makes people type news.ycombinator.com or facebook.com in their address bar whenever they have free time. What you are naming are just features that make Facebook a good tool, but it does not explain why Facebook is so addictive.
It of cause also has everything to do with the network effect. Now if you want to know why Facebook got successful originally that has everything to do with spreading from a small, but well-connected, influential group.
Disclaimer: I used to work for a major European social network, so I know at least partially what I am talking about.
EDIT: Also, making a social network scale is much more difficult then you would think. That is why Friendster failed and this is also part of the reason why we (hyves.nl) failed. Our site was notorious for being slow and when we finally got the problem under control, we already had a bad reputation with the in-crowd. Facebook had both an excellent technical team and the advantage of starting of in a half-open beta.
The reason Facebook is successful is not because of these features per se, any web dev could implement photos, events, user profile etc. The strength of Facebook is it's user base and the network effect. Everybody's on Facebook because everybody's on Facebook. Now of course, Mark was the first to implement these features well, so that's why he won and by features I mean the stream and photos (events and apps arrived later when facebook had already won).
> Does Diaspora have a strong chat? It doesn't have chat at all.
Diaspora wanted to make an app so that servers can communicate between each others. There are already tons of chat protocols, creating another one would be stupid. diaspora would not host anything, while facebook make both the app and the hosting, and keeps the data.
Facebook also failed to implement some sort of craigslist, which is something that would really serve a big purpose for people in general (advertise for any sort of stuff, jobs, dating, help needed, local announcements...). I don't understand why they don't do that.
> I have never thought the Diaspora project would succeed, because it's the social network nobody wants.
Diaspora was not created to be wanted, diaspora was created so that users can care a little more about their data. Facebook makes people share data that the marketers try to get. People don't really care about those issues, and investors would not fund something like diaspora. So don't talk about investors and users like they're the same people. Currently there are no technology to make people keep the control over their data and use them with something like facebook. If the tech was there and it was as appealing as facebook, it would be used.
> Diaspora was not created to be wanted, diaspora was created so that users can care a little more about their data.
Which is the stupid part of the whole thing. If nobody wants it, that uses can care "a little more" about their data is immaterial because nobody's using it.
"If" the tech was there--who cares about "the tech", really? Privacy nerds aren't numerous enough to drive a social network. If you want people to buy into what is (not what should or should not be, what is) a niche concern, you need to cater to their needs too.
Well it was a good technological intention, trying to make an open standard for social networking applications, to maybe open new roads for non-facebook developers. Maybe doing a web app was not the good idea though.
The problem with facebook, is that devs can't access the data directly, but users can. It's also an API wall for developers who might have an idea and join the party. The only people to decide what new thing to do and experiment are the people at facebook. It's kinda odd, because the internet is supposed to be an open thing. They have this huge database of users, and all I see is some strange smartphone home app and some homepage redesigns, nothing really new since the website release. I mean as a tech, chatting is not a new thing, facebook just created another chatting protocol. People just chat using facebook instead, instead of sharing their AIM or MSN.
That's why diaspora is cool, at least nobody has real direct authority on your data except the users, or at least it diminishes the link between the host and the user. It's more on the dev side.
What sucks, is that the only real standard thing on the web is the mail. It's the backbone of online identity, it's still there. What can't we do the same for web applications ? The web was not meant for applications of the scale of facebook. Maybe we need finer, grainier ways of exchanging social data. Diaspora was not only about privacy issues, it also wanted to show people maybe there are other things to do with social network than just... commenting pics, chatting and joining groups about whatever thing.
And seriously, facebook is a success because it appealed to basic stuff like this. Why can't some programmers have the ambition of making other things with social networking, and not being called stupid for trying so ?
I mean if a guy Zuckerberg did not put a little effort, there would never have been facebook. I heard a former diaspora dev killed himself. That's not towards success, but nobody really cares either. It's like wanting innovation is a sin or something.
> Facebook also failed to implement some sort of craigslist, which is something that would really serve a big purpose for people in general (advertise for any sort of stuff, jobs, dating, help needed, local announcements...). I don't understand why they don't do that.
Do people really use this ? It's not a facebook feature anymore, it's oodle, and it's some kind of weird app. It's a fail.
Anyways facebook is really an ass, it did not let me login because I tried to from a public wifi, even by resetting my password with my email, I had to try it on an old account. They are so many phishing on facebook it's not even funny.
I'm sure zuckerberg is laughing his ass off when he's surrounded by all the salesmen type who wants to do this and that with facebook. I wish he could just quit facebook asap and try to make new projects. Or maybe he's totally fine with it, but I doubt he's thinking the site really evolved at all in terms of features.
All that facebook was is a privacy outrage, bad hopes and huge datacenters, and a lost opportunity to work with google. And also "mom! don't comment on my wall!". And classmates bullying each other. And happy marketers analysing huge blobs of data.
Diaspora is like email or Jabber - one can have an account anywhere and communicate with everyone.
I thought that Diaspora would be attractive for large news portals (those all kind of news portals - from bussiness to gossips). They would be able to create social network, as they used to offer free email accounts. This would be attractive for users since they can communicate with people who prefer other portals.
Apparently it does not work that way, portals place everywhere like buttons or adopt FB comments. Kind of strange since one day Facebook might start charging for that.
Purpose is a driving force to get started. Well having chat, photos, status etc come default to any social network platform in 2013.
As for Facebook connecting with Harvard students was one purpose but more than that it was "Relationship Status" that gave them instant growth. Everyone was curious & everyone signed up! This resulted in network effect.
Different people use the service in different ways. Who would have thought 1.11 billion people are different from each other? Crazy how that works huh?
Honestly I think that in the startup community there has been an enormous failure to understand what makes Facebook so popular.
The most important features of Facebook are not the wall, and they're not sharing statuses or links.
The most important features of Facebook, are:
(1) Chat with a strong mobile app- for many people, Facebook chat has replaced personal (as opposed to work) email, texting, AIM, and Google Talk. It is a simple, sure-fire way to be able to contact anyone you know, and this is the single most important feature of Facebook. Does Diaspora have a strong chat? It doesn't have chat at all.
(2) Facebook groups. It is fairly common for an informal friend group to create a Facebook group for communication, or for an entire class of a university or high school to create an incredibly active group. Most universities have varying groups for varying purposes.
(3) Facebook events. It is common on college campuses for fraternity events and other student activities to be advertised through a Facebook event, and anyone who doesn't get invited to these events might feel out of the loop. Many informal invitations to parties between friends are also sent through Facebook events.
(4) The user's information page. Immediately upon friending someone, you are generally able to discover their religion, their politics, their interests, and, most importantly, their relationship status. In this way, Facebook is a very important tool on both the dating and friend scene for young people.
And, social networks like Google+ and Diaspora have utterly failed to properly address these features. Google+ took months to create events and groups, and honestly now the interface is so cluttered and clunky that I don't think it will ever be accessible to the basic user in its current form. Diaspora has utterly failed to implement any of these features.
Young people want a social network where they can quickly discover what kind of person each other are and what their social situation is, share events and groups with each other, and chat with each other, especially on mobile. Being able to upload photos is also important, but sharing statuses and links is probably the least important feature. A social network which effectively implements all of these in a minimalist, privacy aware way, would without a doubt succeed.