Those bet terms seem really odd. Your bet is that within 3 years, there will be a distributed social network with at least 1M users? Am I reading that correctly?
Google Plus, which people aren't even really sure is a success yet, had 10 million users in less than a month. Is there some reason that you chose the number 1M as significant traction? If anything, those terms suggest to me that you're not really convinced it's going to happen.
buddycloud already claims over 500K users and seems to have significant momentum, some developer discipline, and is using well-known standards, even if XMPP isn't everyone's favorite standard.
And as others mention, you might want to count identi.ca too.
If you think my bet is too paltry perhaps we can raise the stakes.
However, note I said greater than 1M monthly actives, which is a more serious measure of traction than just user accounts.
1. People are uncertain whether Google Plus, a centralized social network, will gain significant enough traction to become a force in social networks.
2. Google Plus, in 2011, has had extended periods (weeks, months) where it gained 1M users every 3 days (the number of users in the bet). Thus, orders of magnitude more than 1M users is not sufficient to necessarily be a substantial social network.
3. In 2014, presumably there will be even more users on the Internet, and it will be possible to gain traction even faster than in 2011. Further, a social network might need to be even larger to be a substantial force in 2014.
4. Therefore, why would one set the threshold for "significant" traction for distributed social networks in 2014 at one network with 1M users, when that number may be orders of magnitude too small to be relevant in 2011?
(This ignores the question, of course, of what counts as distributed and/or what counts as a social network.)
Obviously, Google Plus is not distributed, or else one of the people would have already won the bet, since Google Plus already has millions of users!
I am confused, however, by your comment about users rolling over from Gmail. First, do you have evidence for this claim? (If anything, it seemed to be false in the case of Buzz.) Second, how is it relevant?
Google Plus is a new service that goes with your Google account, just like Gmail, Documents, Maps, etc. They don't count as new users if they already have a Google account.
He's not saying Google Plus fulfills the bet, but rather that the user base it has amassed is an example of why winning the bet would be meaningless, or at the very least an unnaturally easy target.
Comments
Those bet terms seem really odd. Your bet is that within 3 years, there will be a distributed social network with at least 1M users? Am I reading that correctly?
Google Plus, which people aren't even really sure is a success yet, had 10 million users in less than a month. Is there some reason that you chose the number 1M as significant traction? If anything, those terms suggest to me that you're not really convinced it's going to happen.
I chose those terms to win easily. ;)
buddycloud already claims over 500K users and seems to have significant momentum, some developer discipline, and is using well-known standards, even if XMPP isn't everyone's favorite standard.
And as others mention, you might want to count identi.ca too.
If you think my bet is too paltry perhaps we can raise the stakes.
However, note I said greater than 1M monthly actives, which is a more serious measure of traction than just user accounts.
Google Plus is not distributed, and they gained most of their users rolling over from gmail.
I believe you misunderstood my point.
1. People are uncertain whether Google Plus, a centralized social network, will gain significant enough traction to become a force in social networks.
2. Google Plus, in 2011, has had extended periods (weeks, months) where it gained 1M users every 3 days (the number of users in the bet). Thus, orders of magnitude more than 1M users is not sufficient to necessarily be a substantial social network.
3. In 2014, presumably there will be even more users on the Internet, and it will be possible to gain traction even faster than in 2011. Further, a social network might need to be even larger to be a substantial force in 2014.
4. Therefore, why would one set the threshold for "significant" traction for distributed social networks in 2014 at one network with 1M users, when that number may be orders of magnitude too small to be relevant in 2011?
(This ignores the question, of course, of what counts as distributed and/or what counts as a social network.)
Obviously, Google Plus is not distributed, or else one of the people would have already won the bet, since Google Plus already has millions of users!
I am confused, however, by your comment about users rolling over from Gmail. First, do you have evidence for this claim? (If anything, it seemed to be false in the case of Buzz.) Second, how is it relevant?
Google Plus is a new service that goes with your Google account, just like Gmail, Documents, Maps, etc. They don't count as new users if they already have a Google account.
He's not saying Google Plus fulfills the bet, but rather that the user base it has amassed is an example of why winning the bet would be meaningless, or at the very least an unnaturally easy target.