Nobody said they couldn't show some ads to make it pay for itself. All that is needed is a change in transparency and some kind of safeguard against abuse.
Facebook is doing pretty good, except for those two points. Diaspora wants to fix things that don't need fixing and will spend a lot of their work on it as well as limiting their chances of success by adding an immediate barrier to entry, either in the form of a 'seedbox' (which, for instance where I live would be against the t.o.s. of most providers) or by having to pay a relatively large amount of money per month.
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I think diaspora is missing the boat on that one.
Nobody said they couldn't show some ads to make it pay for itself. All that is needed is a change in transparency and some kind of safeguard against abuse.
Facebook is doing pretty good, except for those two points. Diaspora wants to fix things that don't need fixing and will spend a lot of their work on it as well as limiting their chances of success by adding an immediate barrier to entry, either in the form of a 'seedbox' (which, for instance where I live would be against the t.o.s. of most providers) or by having to pay a relatively large amount of money per month.
Targeted Facebook ads are not worth much; I would expect untargeted, privacy-friendly Diaspora ads to be worth even less (i.e. zero).
Also, I think hosting can be done for $99/year which doesn't seem like that much to me.