On one hand, I understand that the original concept wasn't as successful as everyone thought, so the best thing to do is try to do something else.
On the other hand, "meme creation" is so overdone at this point that I am surprised that this is the "next big thing" that they try to build
Diaspora started out wanting to change the world-- creating something addictive may be profitable, but as other commenters say, underwhelming.
I seriously admired (and still do) the Diaspora guys for tackling probably the hardest problem there is, replacing facebook with a distributed alternative. And things have probably been a lot tougher than any of us can imagine.
However, how do you go from the ambitious Facebook-Killer to an quickmeme/pinterest mashup, especially from the godfather YC? I know all the big things start small somewhere, but something just doesnt feel right to me. There must be some secret sauce that only pg et al. know.
> I seriously admired (and still do) the Diaspora guys for tackling probably the hardest problem there is
Its a trivial problem compared to what SpaceX, Solum, and tons of others are tackling.
> However, how do you go from the ambitious Facebook-Killer to an quickmeme/pinterest mashup
This sentence is a great example of cognitive dissonance. The reality is, it is easy to go from one to the other because they are pretty much the same thing: People get to share stuff with each other on a web interface.
> especially from the godfather YC
> There must be some secret sauce that only pg et al. know
PG invests in dumb shit. YC invests in dumb shit. All the time. Their business model is not "invest in the best ideas in the world" its "invest in people who have the potential to make billion dollar companies".
Furthermore, PG has stated this in his essays, and there is ample evidence in the many startups they have invested in throughout the years.
So, I hope I've helped push you through the social-web-center-of-the-universe and YC-the-creator stage.
I've been there, and its nice to move on.
I get your frustration with the constant stream of Blathrs and idiot.lys — most of these trendy social sites are never going to amount to anything. But what Diaspora originally set out to do was and is important.
I remember visiting a college sophomore when I was a senior in HS and FB was still restricted to college students. He and his friends were all making joke groups[1] and inviting everyone.
Honestly, I think that if a company is aiming for the social brass ring, gunning for Facebook, the best thing they could do is become 20 year olds' favorite way to joke around with each other online. High school kids are all too happy to follow whatever college kids are doing, and these young audiences are much more likely to break out of their established surfing habits than adults are. Imgur.com is the backbone of the teenage social web.
[1] For example: http://www.facebook.com/pages/I-Will-Go-Slightly-Out-of-My-W...
We feel like people need to feel like they have investment in the stuff they create. It is kinda like when Betty Crocker re-jigged instant cake mix in the 50s to add eggs, and then people felt like they were cooking with love™. We hope that Makr gets people to be creative, and thus care more about the stuff they have online.
It a different direction than the distributed bits problem (and D* continues to exist to solve this problem), but making people care about their stuff online might actually be a harder one in practice.
That being said, it does feel quite off your core mission. What is your indication/evidence that people care more about ownership about the stuff they create than their actual identity online?
Besides there is so many of such sites already, it makes me sad to think that resources are wasted there instead of on Diaspora (or other "usefull" stuff).
In this sense, it reminds me more of an LJSecret's Pinterest, and these two audience types don't blend well together at a social level, so I'm not sure how a a platform catering to both of them will do over time.
However, I do not think it's sad in any way. In my book, entertainment is is useful.
I just wish it had a way to link it with diaspora profiles, so diaspora could gain some users through it :)
If yes, that is the biggest flaw of Kickstarter, no accountability. I can dream something really great, raise tons of cash via Kickstarter, and use that to do something else.
Except they're not going to just not have any UI design at all, and hiring contractors for a whole project would probably end up being more expensive than a full time person anyway. Other members of the team could do it (probably not as well as a specialist), but then they would actually be spending time on design that they would have spent on the back end, which was your original criticism.
Also, the "flashiness" of the interface has a lot more to do with the talent of the designer than anything else. A talented designer may charge more, but probably not that much more, especially on a feel-good open source kickstarter project.
Is sharing status really a lot more complicated than an RSS feed with public key encryption?
When I look at companies like Makr, I simply just wonder "why"? I'm unconvinced many people in "the real world" will use this or need to use this.
Am I missing something?
Maybe this YC class is just a result of many lessons learned. It does seem the problems they tackle are, for lack of a better word, lame, but that doesn't mean they can't grow into something really big.
I guess time will tell, but best of luck to Makr.io. My only wish is that they share everything they must have learned through the process of Diaspora.
1. Does Y Combinator then own a stake in their product Makr, or in Disapora?
2. When Allerta went from Waterloo Velocity's incubator to inPulse (at Y Combinator) and then Pebble (with Kickstarter's help), which pivot does Y Combinator have an ownership in? The parent company, or the new product?
3. Did everyday.me get accepted into the YC class, or Noodle Labs (makers of everyday.me) receive funding?
4. If you start an unrelated side project while you're there, is it seen as a pivot? And does YC have a claim in that?
color me disappointed
Makrio may or may not be different from 4chan (some thoughts on that here http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4393668), but regardless, for many of us it might be the first service that actually works!
I don't like memes, I think they are stupid, and that's why I've never used 4chan or 9gag or cared much for the Cheeseburger network. But, with Makrio I actually have fun; something about it is different and it draws me in.
Before you dismiss the site as "just another X", give it a try for a few days, you just might like it!
