Please, somebody, create a facebook competitor! Don't wait for Diaspora; I don't think their idea will work for the average user. This market desperately needs competition!
A competitor would never gain enough traction to reach critical mass (defined as when the average person has an account on both) without some help from facebook in the form of a stupid business decision. Or if they managed to think of some killer feature.
But simply a copy will never work.
And BTW, the main reason you hate facebook is because they are big. So adding a competitor will not help you - eventually they will get big too, and you will hate them as well.
Two big competitors are much better than just one.
In one sense - facebook becomes a natural monopoly. Back in say 2007/8 I had to log in to both facebook and myspace to see what my friends were up to. Now I just have to use facebook. That is much simpler and easier for me as a user.
Be better in some way than facebook (not selling users private information would be an easy one) Make it so that you could see what you friends were upto on facebook, but without being a user yourself.
Suddenly you cracked the chicken and egg problem, which is exactly why facebook goes after this with the force of the law.
A monopoly based on technology never lasts, but if you can build one on some kind of legal issue, you are golden.
Incorrect.
What I miss is some website where I can choose who gets to read what I write: this post is for everbody, this is only for my family, this is for my work mates, this is for the general public, this is for my brother.
The advantage of this would be that you could move groups over one at a time (since they would get some benefit from it, people would want to use it) and it is something facebook can't do and don't want to.
Try this site out: http://www.facebook.com/ - they have a nifty feature that does exactly that.
(1) You share your birthday with a friend Bob.
(2) Your friend Bob installs a facebook game from the Sleazo Company.
(3) Sleazo Company now knows your birthday.
That's how I understand it works. Your friends can share your information with third-party facebook applications. Please correct me if I am wrong.
Unless we're willing to consider DRM for social networks, this won't change with Diaspora or any other kind of software that puts your birthday on Bobs computer in any kind of standardized format.
At the same time he makes huge mental leaps that I completely disagree with (he said basically the same thing about open source/open culture) but there are several gems in the book.
And the marketing would be easy, as facebook isn't branded as the nice guy, but as the jerk.