My story is that I have software that works, how's that? :)
They definitely had connections, what with Eben Moglen of the EFF backing them, and them getting an article in the New York Times, that kind of thing doesn't happen without some kind of connections. A lot of that was probably just a result of being NYU students. I was working as a pizza delivery driver in Baltimore City (home of The Wire) when I started Appleseed, so I'm sure they have me one-upped in the social capital department.
At some point, a story may matter, but right now, I'm focusing on building the software out, and accomplishing what people are looking for. Appleseed has more features completed than they even have in their roadmap, it's way easier to install, it's extensible (a framework, not just an app), and I've got design documents and specs for the next year of development and beyond, including a mobile API, client-side apps, and distributed search (the holy grail of open social networking).
The great thing about open source is that the press can come later, I can take the time to focus on building the software first, and there isn't the same first-to-market requirement that startups have. I'm not necessarily trying to get users to sign up, I'm trying to get administrators to install it. And that requires a certain level of polish and feature-set.
Users don't have to care about Appleseed anymore than they care about what Joomla or Drupal is, so that's the advantage of being more mature than the competition.
Of course, at this point, I'm not really looking at Diaspora as my competition anyways, I'm looking towards Facebook.
You've been getting quite a bit of press, though, in the sense that when I think "distributed social networking" I think Appleseed instead of Diaspora (even though I didn't remember the name exactly, but, hey, that's what historious is for).
Keep up the good work, I firmly believe that a framework for distributed social apps will be the future. I would love something like Google Latitude but without Google getting my location, and then I could choose who to update and in what manner...
They definitely had connections, what with Eben Moglen of the EFF backing them, and them getting an article in the New York Times, that kind of thing doesn't happen without some kind of connections. A lot of that was probably just a result of being NYU students. I was working as a pizza delivery driver in Baltimore City (home of The Wire) when I started Appleseed, so I'm sure they have me one-upped in the social capital department.
At some point, a story may matter, but right now, I'm focusing on building the software out, and accomplishing what people are looking for. Appleseed has more features completed than they even have in their roadmap, it's way easier to install, it's extensible (a framework, not just an app), and I've got design documents and specs for the next year of development and beyond, including a mobile API, client-side apps, and distributed search (the holy grail of open social networking).
The great thing about open source is that the press can come later, I can take the time to focus on building the software first, and there isn't the same first-to-market requirement that startups have. I'm not necessarily trying to get users to sign up, I'm trying to get administrators to install it. And that requires a certain level of polish and feature-set.
Users don't have to care about Appleseed anymore than they care about what Joomla or Drupal is, so that's the advantage of being more mature than the competition.
Of course, at this point, I'm not really looking at Diaspora as my competition anyways, I'm looking towards Facebook.