Local Loop

I’ve just read an ITWeb article entitled “Diaspora won’t work in SA” (referring to the soon to be launched Diaspora social network). The article quotes Steven Ambrose of WWW Strategy :

“According to Ambrose, only 12% of South Africans have access to the Internet and of that 12%, only 4% have broadband. This means that only 4% of South Africans will be able to make proper use of Diaspora. For the other 8% with Internet access, the service stops being a real-time, always-on offering”

It is clear to me that Ambrose doesn’t understand Diaspora’s design, and this leads him to make an incorrect inference from his statistics.

To illustrate why, lets think about e-mail as an analogy:

As a Gmail user, I can use my email client, or the web interface to access my email from an intermittently connected device (similar to how Facebook users do). Gmail (like Facebook) is where the data is stored, and their servers are always online.

I am able to use Gmail to exchange email with parties who use another email service (provided by, for example, their ISP or their company) thanks to simple, open standards that define how mail servers talk to each other. Facebook is a closed system: I cannot use my LinkedIN account to “friend” someone on Facebook.

Because email is decentralized, I get to choose a provider, and if I don’t like any of the options, I could (in theory) run my own. This competition created for my business by this open system is what keeps Google from claiming ownership to my content and from disrespecting my privacy (and ultimately this is why I don’t run my own mail server – I don’t have to).

Now it is easy to imagine the Diaspora company (or anyone else, like Google for example) providing a “hosted seed service” for 90% of the users who don’t care to host their own Diaspora seed. In summary, just like email, Diaspora architecture doesn’t require broadband (or more specifically, always-on Internet), nor does it necessarily have to be more difficult to use.

Diaspora will succeed because unlike the closed Facebook model, it follows powerful and fundamental principles behind the success of the Internet:

“the remarkable success of the Internet can be traced to a few simple network principles – end-to-end design, layered architecture, and open standards — which together give consumers choice and control over their online activities”
– Vint Cerf (ACM Turing Award recipient)

Local Cape Town based start-up TrustFabric is building a similar decentralized system, but they seem to be focusing on VRM as their killer app (as opposed to social networking).

I was interested to read their take on TrustFabric versus Diaspora. The way I understand it, TrustFabric’s criticism of Diaspora is that they don’t think the Americans can get the job done (at least not as well as they can). Personally, I think there is enough space for both, but when I read their, and Steven Ambrose’s views, I am reminded of this:

“You’re on the right track when people complain that you’re unqualified, or that you’ve done something inappropriate”
– Paul Graham