What ever happened to diaspora?
July 13th, 2010 • Innovation, Social Media
Remember diaspora* (pronounced die-as-poe-ra)? It was all the rage back in May. A move to decentralize the web; a seemingly moral obligation provide the world with a ”privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all distributed open source social network.” Sounds grand, doesn’t it? Actually, it’s four dudes from NYU. They put their idea on kickstarter with the hopes of raising $10k so they could eat ramen noodles over the summer while they wrote their code.
Turns out they hit on something.
Not only did they reach their goal (they reached $10k in 12 days) they smashed it, raising over $200k in 39 days! And this is all before a single line of code was written. Why? This was right around the time when Facebook released its Open Graph and people were pissed about privacy concerns (yet again).
All the makings of a disruptive technology that can knock Facebook on its ass?
Ok, so I feel like we all know that there are a whole bunch of things wrong with Facebook. A poor user interface, and privacy concerns (perceived or otherwise) are the two most obvious.
But remember when Facebook came out? Myspace was king, and social networking was cluttered and messy.
Facebook came along and changed things. It clean things up and introduced us to the walled garden. Oh ya, and it was only for college students — you actually needed a valid university email address to sign up.
Things felt safe. And it was relitvely safe. Everyone was in the same boat. And — here’s the kicker — there was a pretty good chance all the people in your “friends” list were actually your friends!
Fast forward and social networking now dominates our Internet usage, and Facebook has dominated social networking. But now, this once pristine, walled garden isn’t so anymore. Things are getting cluttered and messy all over again. And they certainly don’t feel safe.
The real question is, what will we be doing in 5 years social media wise?
What about 1 year? 6 months? It’s hard to imagine that 500M people will abandon ship and move to a new network. But hey, I bet Myspace was thinking the same thing back in 2006.
Facebook won over Myspace becuase it found a beachhead — college students — and becuase it cleaned up its act, and because it created a walled garden (which has its advantages). But what if the pendulum is ready to swing back the other way? Something open – no walls, yet private as can be.
David and Goliath: David always wins.
Just when it seems that a company is too big to fail, it does. It has happened over and over again — it’s called disruptive innovation and the innovators dilemma. The disruptor is usually a quick and nimble nobody with a fraction of the functionality of the disruptee; initially taking root at the bottom of a market, relentlessly moving up market, and eventually displacing established competitor. The established competitor (i.e. Facebook) tries to innovate quickly, but can’t because its large, stable customer base can’t handle too much change too quickly. Hmm…does this sound familiar?
What did ever happen to diaspora?
Four, 20 year-old, self-proclaimed nerds with $200k in cash, and no real obligations. I know what you might be thinking…and some were predicting immentent doom. But actually, one month on, it looks like they’re doing ok.
So will these be the guys to take down Facebook? Will someone else do it? Or will Facebook live on forever?
