Disapora: Taking on Facebook....

Diaspora

This is a very interesting open source project that has been in the news lately. They are working on a distributed "social portal" setup that you have full control over. none of the facebook tricks to hijack your information and sell it to the highest bidder, everything under your control... And it's a great idea. A lot of other people see it as a good idea They have received over a hundred thousand dollars for support in donations...

too bad it's doomed to failure.

Why? Facebook and myspace exploded for a simple reason. It's brain-dead easy to get going on it. No knowledge at all is needed to get your facebook or myspace page up. No software to install, and if my internet is down at home, My facebook page is still online.

People wont do things that take effort. Look at the amount of effort people use to keep their information private. They don't read the fine print that that survey they took will be sol to everyone and their brother and then posted online at various places for all to see. They don't read EULA's that state all their personal information is now the property of XYZ corporation. Their videos become the property of the video sharing site, and the photo site can sell their photos and make money off them.

I really do hope these guys are successful. but I cant see how they plan on getting their product used by the bottom 2/3rd's of the population that think their computer is a toaster, and believe it when a pop up says their computer is infected and they need to enter their credit card numbers now to clean it up.