I'm noticing many problems with your perspective, and since I'm in a good mood this morning I'm going to try and help force-puke the cool aid out of you.
> 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.
Facebook is a powerful societal force at this point, and successfully disrupting it with a distributed, non-corporate-controlled service would make a big difference for individual choice. See what I wrote here: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4389118
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.
> Facebook is a powerful societal force at this point, and successfully disrupting it with a distributed, non-corporate-controlled service would make a big difference for individual choice.
What individual choices would it make a big difference for?
> I get your frustration with the constant stream of Blathrs and idiot.lys
I'm not frustrated.
> But what Diaspora originally set out to do was and is important.
>What individual choices would it make a big difference for?
Control your own data, for ex. when it's deleted it's really gone (except for whom you already shared with,) not just hidden until it's sold to somebody or hacked.
Not necessarily being forced into changing user interface ala Timeline, or any of the other dozen times it's happened, just to fit some corporate goal.
Sharing pictures or stories or groups with friends without violating the lowest common denominator social norms enforced by a corporate terms of service, and thereby being banned from the service for life.
Probably a more free "application" ecosystem whose selection criteria isn't #1 does this make Facebook, Inc. money or cost it money.
> What individual choices would it make a big difference for?
As I said in the linked post: choosing not to use Facebook is currently a high-cost/impractical choice for many people. That means we're almost obliged to accept how they use our data.
You called Diaspora's original aims "a trivial problem". That sounds like the opposite of "important" to me.
Well, that seems like apples and oranges to me. Space exploration may (or may not) end up being important to human race's survival super-long-term, but breaking Facebook's monopoly, replacing it with services that offer clear, honest privacy settings, would help a lot of people now. There's no reason we can't have both SpaceX and a Diaspora-like project — important in different ways to different groups of people.
> 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.