Revenue model for Diaspora* and all decentralized social networks

There isn't much to write about for the moment. It's too early. I'll try to find some time in the in March, I guess. I'll write a note somewhere.

Kevin does not seem very active on that thread. You need more enthusiasm than that to tackle a task :-/

The "Social browser" looks similar to the "identity linked to your browser" that was the Persona project of the Mozilla foundation. I also think that my browser should be my identity instead of Facebook Connect / Google / Open ID for my connection ids or Gravatar for my profile picture, but this is really far from the actual work on the diaspora* project. We are not able at all to target such a long term goal with the current organization, sorry.

Seems you all had great time at FOSDEM 2015? Were there any interesting ideas discussed about how to make Diaspora profitable?
What about launching a campaign/survey to all Diaspora users about what they use Diaspora for:
a) business
b) fun
c) both

and then approaching those who answered with a) and c) for more details and case-studies. I was amazed that Diaspora has more that 1M active users so far! I think the tech medias will love listening to and supporting this campaign!

@flaburgan
The social media decentralization has two aspects:

a) impersonation
b) content management

About a) - Every single system where your impersonation matters is trying to create its own legal verification process and secure it. There is no option yet to do that via one profile, managed by you or by preferred from you managing authority.
If the Personas at Mozilla try to aggregate the ratings from all P2P marketplaces, like AirBnB and TaskRabbit, and try to make the work with them easier via plugins, you will be one step ahead.

About b) - the most successful decentralized social network so far is called..Wordpress. Some people mistake it with CMS, because its CMS features are its most popular ones. Actually, Wordpress is a huge social network with CMS functionality.
Its social networking features are rather basic, but they exist and progress. The community of Wordpress supports the development of the platform, they grow best practices of its usage and standards. The developers of Wordpress can monetize their skills really easy. I wish this whole ecosystem will grow also at Diaspora.
So far we have a lot to learn from communities like Wordpress and it's great we have them.
I think we should adapt one by one all their best practices.

Were there any interesting ideas discussed about how to make Diaspora profitable?

None... Again : not the goal...

What is the goal of Diaspora? For me the goals are diverse, not singular. It would be interesting to discuss /why/ the Diaspora software is not a good choice to spend time thinking about how to adapt it into a for-profit business.

Personally, I think the Tor model of sustainability is a good one. The Tor foundation raises enough money as a not-for-profit to employ developers to work on the software, sysadmins to work on the network, lawyers to defend the network operators and advocates to promote Tor in diverse communities. All of this is done without a motivation for "making Tor profitable".

It is of important note that Tor makes money and pays their developers. Diaspora is a different project, and one that could be worth a lot of money, though I wouldn't be very interested in creating a for-profit company around it.

I'd rather focus on ensuring Diaspora is sustainable than profitable.

@goob, @augier, @pizza sustainability is important in terms of survival, but in longer term it should be profitable, in order to reinvest in R&D and engage people. It could be profitable also not only in terms of money, but in terms of knowledge, contacts, community support, trust and recognition.

You see - Facebook doesn't allow you to build your own social network. Here you can do it and attract lean hackers, entrepreneurs, activists.

http://www.smartpassiveincome.com/brand-loyalty/ - this is one great retention strategy which you can see in Diaspora, Wordpress and many other cause businesses.

Wordpress grew in terms of profit and cause and this allowed many people to enter the market. This created a lot of great practices in the content popularization and knowledge sharing, like the Pat Flynn's, Leo Babauta's and Yaro Starak ones.

The money flow anyway, and there is need of decentralized network. So far Wordpress plays the role of one of them. Plenty of people prefer to invest in its infrastructure and experiment, instead of giving their money and content to Facebook. Investing in Diaspora and the other FLO networks is like a game with more interesting game play:)

Sh... You are stubborn...

@goob, @augier, @pizza sustainability is important in terms of survival, but in longer term it should be profitable

This is an open-source project the goal is not to make profits !

@smdm I don't think the Wordpress.com example applies to the current leadership of D*. As I read, The Diaspora Foundation is an unincorporated NGO composed of an international group of software engineers, sysadmins and advocates. The current state of all publicly held assets and their owners are defined on the wiki.

To contrast, wordpress.com is a privately held for-profit corporation registered in the USA by a holding company called Automattic. To me this company looks like a standard mid-sized software consulting firm, much like the one I work for.

I encourage you to continue with your work to figure out a revenue model for your work with Diaspora, though I don't think the Diaspora Foundation is the correct forum for this discussion. A good direction could be to create a corporation yourself, which performs custom software services for Diaspora. Target organizations, NGOs and private enterprises. Perhaps partner with ISPs and hosting companies to provide infrastructure for your services. There are existing business models to generate revenue from open source software development, though rarely are these models within the development team of the software project itself.

Finally, @augier I don't think you fully understand the licensing model of open-source software and distribution. Nowhere is there a stated goal not to make profit from the work. In fact, the GPL explicitly states that a for-profit sale of the software is permitted! The following is an excerpt from the GPLv3

Each contributor grants you a non-exclusive, worldwide,
royalty-free patent license under the contributor's essential
patent claims, to make, use, sell, offer for sale, import and
otherwise run, modify and propagate the contents of its
contributor version.

Finally, @augier I don’t think you fully understand the licensing model of open-source software and distribution. Nowhere is there a stated goal not to make profit from the work.

Oh ? You think ?
I'm not claiming this is forbidden, I'm claimming this is just not the goal... Read again ;)