"How diaspora can succeed: do the same thing Facebook does, but fix the privacy."
What is the definition of success here though? A super-niche social network that privacy-geeks use? The idealism is understandable but misguided. These guys won't touch Facebook by trying to make a social network with a feature better at X - in this case privacy - thats not how giants get toppled.
Facebook won social networking, Google won search. Each will be beat by their core business being displaced by something else, not someone coming along and doing what they do incrementally better. (e.g. socially shared links driving down search traffic is Facebook indirectly biting a chunk out of Google's business)
I disagree here. Facebook did a few things incrementally better than its prior contemporaries. Remember when Friendster and MySpace had more users than Facebook? Facebook won social networking because it essentially fixed a few problems that plagued its competitors. MySpace was/is a mess. And Friendster was too self-serious (forcing you to post a personal photo instead of an avatar) and restrictive. And both MySpace and Friendster got privacy wrong from the get go. One of Facebook's earliest appeals was the privacy it allowed users.
Another factor was how exclusive it was - first Harvard only, then just US colleges. People were anxious to get an invite, for Facebook to open up globally. When it did happen, it was massive.
Creating exclusivity can create publicity in its own right and increase expectation. It can also fail though - look at Google Wave.
What is the definition of success here though? A super-niche social network that privacy-geeks use? The idealism is understandable but misguided. These guys won't touch Facebook by trying to make a social network with a feature better at X - in this case privacy - thats not how giants get toppled.
Facebook won social networking, Google won search. Each will be beat by their core business being displaced by something else, not someone coming along and doing what they do incrementally better. (e.g. socially shared links driving down search traffic is Facebook indirectly biting a chunk out of Google's business)