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I hate to say it, but this is what happens when you have a bunch of people, who have no idea what early stage investing is like, and have them invest in an early stage company. It results in:

* the wrong amount of money being given

* extremely high expectations

* 24 / 7 monitoring, with anger if any tiny mistake is made

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BTW, Diaspora isn't a company and nobody invested in it. Donating to an open source project != early-stage investing.

In Diaspora's case, I suspect many of the donors have low expectations and are not monitoring the project carefully, because it doesn't make sense to spend much time following up on a $20 donation.

Joe Soap who donated might not be monitoring, but the media are. Diaspora was mentioned on the New York Times IIRC. They are going to want to do a follow up, even if it's "Facebook 'killer' is a dud"

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