Yeah, I'm pretty sure that if Diaspora does blow up and become as popular as Facebook, that eventually the same problems will arise. But maybe they'll find a way around that. It'd be nice to have a social networking site without the stupid ads, applications, games, etc etc.

I can't think of a single instance where a site that had such market dominance as facebook was overtaken by another site that offered essentially nothing new.

facebook and myspace are not the same thing. Facebook offered a lot more than what myspace had and that's why it became so popular. Twitter gained popularity because it too offered something neither myspace nor facebook has. mozilla gained support over IE because it simply had better features.

But Chrome is not overtaking mozilla because there isn't enough incentive to switch. gaim might be a better chatting protocol than MSN but since people are content with MSN they see no reason to switch. google video vs youtube, bing vs google, the examples go on.

Frankly I'm not convinced that diaspora is an example of the former and not the latter. Why should I switch? Because of that corporate info stuff? I don't really care about that, and neither do most facebook users. There is nothing I put on facebook that I would be concerned about if it got into the hands of a corporation.

There will always be diehard technerds who will push opera over mozilla, linux over windows, android over iphone, betamax over VHS, etc. but the diehard technerds are a minority audience.

Originally Posted by Abid.Hasan

I can't think of a single instance where a site that had such market dominance as facebook was overtaken by another site that offered essentially nothing new.

facebook and myspace are not the same thing. Facebook offered a lot more than what myspace had and that's why it became so popular. Twitter gained popularity because it too offered something neither myspace nor facebook has. mozilla gained support over IE because it simply had better features.

But Chrome is not overtaking mozilla because there isn't enough incentive to switch. gaim might be a better chatting protocol than MSN but since people are content with MSN they see no reason to switch. google video vs youtube, bing vs google, the examples go on.

Frankly I'm not convinced that diaspora is an example of the former and not the latter. Why should I switch? Because of that corporate info stuff? I don't really care about that, and neither do most facebook users. There is nothing I put on facebook that I would be concerned about if it got into the hands of a corporation.

There will always be diehard technerds who will push opera over mozilla, linux over windows, android over iphone, betamax over VHS, etc. but the diehard technerds are a minority audience.

Corporations aren't the only thing to be concerned about. I'm sure a lot of people put information such as: Telephone number, address, full name, where they work and more. Including things such as there elementary school, highschool, university, pet names and even more. Maybe they don't even state it, but just looking at the groups they are in or what they are a fan of can reveal the information.

Any of those information sound familiar? Such as security questions for online banking and credit cards. Sure it's a bit harder because you don't have things like SIN and passport, but I'm sure it's still possible if you are good enough.

Just to clarify: when Facebook first started overtaking Myspace the only feature that Facebook had and Myspace didn't was photo tagging. It was the stuff Facebook lacked that made it appealing: no HTML coding, no intrusive flashing ads, no spammers, etc. It gave people less freedom, but it was much simpler and cleaner.

Chrome also has a larger market share than what Mozilla had at this point; it took Mozilla 5 years to crack 8% market share, which Google did in 2 years. Its a lot less bloated than Firefox, and in a few years time might very well overtake it. Most sources also use numbers saying that IE is still the dominant browser.

Originally Posted by jhan523

Corporations aren't the only thing to be concerned about. I'm sure a lot of people put information such as: Telephone number, address, full name, where they work and more. Including things such as there elementary school, highschool, university, pet names and even more. Maybe they don't even state it, but just looking at the groups they are in or what they are a fan of can reveal the information.

Any of those information sound familiar? Such as security questions for online banking and credit cards. Sure it's a bit harder because you don't have things like SIN and passport, but I'm sure it's still possible if you are good enough.

lol does anyone under the age of 40 actually use the default secret questions for those?

Like I said, there's nothing I put on facebook that I'm worried about "falling into the wrong hands."

Originally Posted by Abid.Hasan

lol does anyone under the age of 40 actually use the default secret questions for those?

Like I said, there's nothing I put on facebook that I'm worried about "falling into the wrong hands."

I personally wouldn't count on the average person to do anything intelligible for me. But then again, that means that the average person wouldn't care about security :\