Re: Alternative to Facebook
Always good to have options. Four coders on the project sound good.
Here’s one thing that caught my eye when the Diaspora coders were talking about similar projects that failed (DiSo):
http://joindiaspora.com/2010/04/30/a-response-to-mr-villa.html
To answer directly, I am pretty sure DISO failed because:
1) They tried to add on to WordPress, a project which was not designed from the ground up to be a distributed network.
2) (a guess) they quickly tried to support all sort of features without building some sort of common infrastructure before trying to add functionality.
I would have replied and mentioned BP of course 
But I also get their point.
