Decentralization for the web

Posted Jul 30, 2015 1:48 UTC (Thu) by proski (guest, #104)
Parent article: Decentralization for the web

Diaspora was built around similar ideas as a decentralized social network. It doesn't seem to be very successful so far. Perhaps there should be analysis of the existing approaches to the network decentralization and their failure to capture the market. Did they fail at search, user interface, user awareness, reliability? Are those failures inherent to the decentralized architecture?

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Decentralization for the web

Posted Jul 30, 2015 21:24 UTC (Thu) by smoogen (subscriber, #97) [Link] (4 responses)

It has been studied multiple times and the issue is not any of those items. It is a "Are my friends on there? Who will I talk to?" for any social service. Most services take off because a certain subset of people at some point in time all feel like "ok no one is here today, maybe if I tell my friends they will join me." and it grows from there. However if there are already existing platforms the need for those first users to go to diaspora is low and unless there is a good reason to leave existing platforms then their friends aren't likely to follow. [tldr it isn't a coding issue, it is a social issue.]

Decentralization for the web

Posted Aug 3, 2015 6:25 UTC (Mon) by aleXXX (subscriber, #2742) [Link] (3 responses)

I considered joining "diaspora" once.
I searched a bit, and as I found out, there is not one diaspora, but several diasporas. Some specialized to some country, some for some topic. For some/most, an account would expire if unused for a month or so. I got an account for one or two of them, and this was so far off from G+.
It looked like the web from the 90ies. I could have lived without all the fancy javascript stuff, but at least I expected a decent modern look.
So, did I find anybody I know on that diaspora server for Canada (I think), which seemed to be alive and didn't expire too fast ? Of on some special one for geeks ? Of course not. And none of them looked like I should stay there. Not much going on, from people I didn't know, hard/impossible to share photos, ugly looking.

Maybe I missed something.

If a "decentralized" social network means many small unconnected social networks then I think this won't work at all.

Decentralization for the web

Posted Aug 4, 2015 8:27 UTC (Tue) by debacle (subscriber, #7114) [Link] (2 responses)

AFAIK, all (or at least most) Diaspora* servers are interconnected. You open an account on any of them and can start share with other people on any Diaspora* server.

Diaspora* is very small, but it is growing constantly.

Decentralization for the web

Posted Aug 7, 2015 12:05 UTC (Fri) by aleXXX (subscriber, #2742) [Link] (1 responses)

I was expecting this too, but either it wasn't the case or at least I couldn't figure it out.

Decentralization for the web

Posted Aug 9, 2015 8:47 UTC (Sun) by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164) [Link]

This is the entire point of federation - having indepentent servers which act like one... See the definition on Wikipedia ;-)

Decentralization for the web

Posted Aug 9, 2015 8:49 UTC (Sun) by jospoortvliet (guest, #33164) [Link]

Diaspora has a different approach, of course. Similar to ownCloud's - see our draft federation API.