Revenue model for Diaspora* and all decentralized social networks

Features and Ideas
1

Hello guys,

I want to show you a project I develop from a while.

It consists of a model how the social media decentralization could happen and generate revenue. The model is based on the experience of several industries to generate revenue using ethical means like trust and knowledge sharing.

In brief - what about if the revenue model for decentralized social media exists, but just needs to be assembled?

Here are some facts:

I. The P2P industry is a billion$ industry, which is using digital ratings, based on trust. It cannot grow, if it doesn’t discover a decentralized profile, integrating portably all these ratings. One day this inevitably will happen.
This will reduce also the infrastructure costs and the ad-costs of any new P2P business.
The questions is - who will do it?

II. Pat Flynn broke the corrupted ad model, sharing affiliates only for things he uses and trusts. This brought him $1.4 revenue just in 6 years from his blog, where he earns trust sharing all his knowledge for free.

Leo Babautta even un-copyrighted his blog, where he shares also his knowledge for free, and this increased his revenue!

So, what about if the monetized decentralized profiles could be fueled with:

a) their P2P ratings
b) the knowledge they share
c) directories with the products/services they use, with honest ratings and affiliate links, bringing revenue
d) another optional directories for causes/problems/wishlists, which will be used for paid interactions with trusted brands and another P2P businesses. This will change the product development, as the clients will be asked first, before the products are created

My detailed model consists of 3 parts:

I. A decentralization roadmap: http://decentralizedmodel.wordpress.com/2014/10/15/the-decentralization-roadmap/ Please let me know what do you think about the milestones I propose. I tried to be concise.

II. Lean Canvas about some of the core modules I observe: http://decentralizedmodel.wordpress.com/2014/10/15/my-social-media-decentralization-core-via-lean-canvas/

III. Some predictions how Facebook will evolve, accepting the models of social media decentralization: http://decentralizedmodel.wordpress.com/2014/10/21/what-facebook-would-look-like-when-the-social-medias-decentralize/

I’ll be happy to hear your feedback!

Note: This discussion was imported from Loomio. Click here to view the original discussion.

2

I wish you luck, remember us when you’re rich and famous :slight_smile:

(not quite sure what this is doing on Loomio though)

3

Isn’t it for discussing potential models how Diaspora* could grow more?

4

Your post said nothing about growing Diaspora, all you talked about was how to make money.

Have I missed the point of your original post?

5

I think all that talk is rather flimsy - sorry if I’m being harsh, but people expect more practical advices, not some sort of a birds-eye view of the problem.
I fail to see the role of diaspora* in the P2P industry for the moment (which is a vague term to begin with - what are you talking about ? torrents? bitcoins? audio-video chats?)

All this talk about profiles, and ratings - sounds nice on paper - but we have more current problems, most of which require man power right now, not sometimes in the future, when that idea might or might not meet its expectations.

The way I see it at the moment, is that D* needs a legal structure that would allow it to receive money (aka donations), and has his own employees - at least several programmers. D* has enough exposure to get several thousands $ each month, I’m sure of it, and every wasted day is sad to me. I’ve heard there is an effort in that direction, but if we don’t move fast, that exposure might fade away.

6

Let’s not castrate every enthusiastic proposal, even there are good reasons to block it. It’s better to be more opened to what others propose, there’s always something to add or positively criticise. Otherwise nobody will give a s**t about coming up with new suggestions. Please keep a decent level of pessimism.

7

Hello guys,

Thanks for your(critical) opinions. I speak about Diaspora in the decentralization roadmap I linked above: http://decentralizedmodel.wordpress.com/2014/10/15/the-decentralization-roadmap/, I don’t know how many of you read it.

I speak also only about using Free Software platforms and utilizing the knowledge sharing revenue models from the other industries for the purposes of the Free Software.

Diaspora cannot sustain on donations. It’s good as an approach for the initial stages, but for the later stages of its development it needs stable revenue model and I think I know one.

Sorry for not being more explicit on my ‘elevator pitch’.

8

Not sure to really understand how you would make money from diaspora*.

It’s ok you developed it in a road map, but you definitely should make short. Not all of us have the tie to read a post that long nor are comfortable with english enough to get it.

9

In brief: You could make money with Diaspora integrating it with another Free Software, which is already making money.

For example like Wordpress, which is lacking a social layer and uses its own social features or integrates with Facebook/G+/Twitter.

Diaspora could provide the lacking social layer to all the Free Software CMS platforms and increase its community this way, and also supplement itself with CMS features some other platforms developed successfully under Free Software license.

10

For example like Wordpress, which is lacking a social layer and uses its own social features or integrates with Facebook/G+/Twitter.

IMHO, too heavy work for the mean we have :confused:

Diaspora could provide the lacking social layer to all the Free Software CMS platforms and increase its community this way, and also supplement itself with CMS features some other platforms developed successfully under Free Software license.

FSF already have it’s own SN : GNU Social.

11

@smdm can you come up with a more concrete plan? How will you do it?

12

@camil yep, I have concrete plan in the roadmap above. We need API between the popular decentralized FLO networks and the popular FLO CMS. Anyone interested?
Also, we need to optimize the infrastructure cost, with plugin/framework bundles for all extensible platforms, but this is a challenge more on the CMS side for now, then here.

@augier

FSF already have it’s own SN : GNU Social.

GNU Social has a very similar problem like Diaspora. By Free Software I mean generally a software under Free Software license(or FLO)

13

We need API between the popular decentralized FLO networks and the popular FLO CMS. Anyone interested?

Hmmf… :confused:
I think you’ll have to wait a looooooooooong time since we have almost nobody to work on actual issues…

14

No, it depends - we could engage for example people who develop course projects for their university studies or need a playground.

We could organize also hackatons for people, who would support Diaspora and attract the sponsors, who used to sponsor FLO events. We could ask the events organizers of the popular hackatons for Wordpress, for example, and the Social browsers/ FLO browsers to speak about Diaspora and attract attention to the idea of having decentralized profile.

We could also open a job board for employers, who are interested in working with people sharing the ideas of the Free/Libre/Open Source software. This can attract more people to Diaspora, who are interested in helping it as a side project or integrating it to their business.

15

we have almost nobody to work on actual issues

Maybe this should be our next media and/or #thunderclap campaign?

Instead of trying to get millions of people signing up, lets go recruit some rails developers!

16

I’ve seen too many failures of the “social browser” concept within VC funded companies from as far back as 1999. Why would a social browser work with a volunteer network? Who would fund the development of desktop software when mobile apps are the biggest target for “social” these days?

I think it would be interesting to have content subscription models, like paywalled newsletters. also some kind of Klout like influence system could be a good way to start figuring out sales potential.

most importantly, how do you measure the TCO of a profile? I know dating sites rely heavily on profile TCO but what is the incentive for D* users? I think it’s exclusively vanity at this moment.

17

We could organize also hackatons for people, who would support Diaspora and attract the sponsors, who used to sponsor FLO events. We could ask the events organizers of the popular hackatons for Wordpress, for example, and the Social browsers/ FLO browsers to speak about Diaspora and attract attention to the idea of having decentralized profile.

A hackaton would be nice. We already found some locations for it, actually. One in France, one in Moldova.

We could also open a job board for employers, who are interested in working with people sharing the ideas of the Free/Libre/Open Source software. This can attract more people to Diaspora, who are interested in helping it as a side project or integrating it to their business.

Now that looks like something more realistic to me. I’m currently developing a project based on diaspora* for some folks in Romania. I do it for money and fun. I try to contribute back as much as I can. I think a business based on customizing diaspora*, or installing it for enterprises would be healthy, much like the companies around GNU Health, MySQL, Postgres.

18

A hackaton would be nice. We already found some locations for it, actually. One in France, one in Moldova.

Could you give more infos ?
I try to organize some kind of metup in France for this summer. 4-5 persons, a week-end and see if we can do bigger next time.

19

@Lee Azzarello

I’ve seen too many failures of the “social browser” concept within VC funded companies from as far back as 1999. Why would a social browser work with a volunteer network? Who would fund the development of desktop software when mobile apps are the biggest target for “social” these days?

That’s why the social browser is the last milestone in the time scale of my roadmap. The social browsers will be profile-centric as the decentralized social profile’s functionality will interact with all business models we intact with. There won’t be any more signing up with an email (or it will be optional) - there will be signing up with a customized social profile, which will allow you to see how your friends interacted with the same business(according their preferences for visibility). So far the social browsers were platform-centric, but the platforms(Facebook, Twitter, G+) change their architecture. So that’s why the social browser is basically Facebook.

The social browser should be a ‘wrapper’ of the social profile, for better social management.

So far, the mobile apps are the closest model to the social browser. In the future, the social browser will contain functionality to manage your personal CRM(not contact list), you personal preferences how to interact with apps and many other metrics, available now only to the owners and business clients of the social networks.

I think it would be interesting to have content subscription models, like paywalled newsletters. also some kind of Klout like influence system could be a good way to start figuring out sales potential.

Yes, some of the functionalities(plugins) of the social browser and the social profiles will be paid, as now are paid the advanced frameworks of Wordpress.

most importantly, how do you measure the TCO of a profile? I know dating sites rely heavily on profile TCO but what is the incentive for D* users? I think it’s exclusively vanity at this moment.

*subscription(license) cost
*hosting
*maintenance
*paid plugins
*security costs - consultancy, maintenance, plugins
*optimization costs - consultancy, maintenance, plugins
*design costs - consultancy, maintenance, paid themes

In Facebook, the TCO of an user profile is $0 for the customer, that’s why Facebook is free, plug and play. All the costs of the optimization, R&D, security and design are covered by them. So that’s why there are ads and also terms and conditions regarding the ownership of your content.

20

@rich1

Instead of trying to get millions of people signing up, lets go recruit some rails developers!

Yes, exactly. I think we should make a list of all universities around the world, teaching:

  • computer science
  • business
  • social studies
  • entrepreneurship

and ask all their professors if they could agree promoting the values of Diaspora to their students and attract them to write course project about it. We need more people who would not only write code, but manage documentations, project-manage some milestones and provide strategic advise about business opportunities for Diaspora.

There are also companies like Pivotal Labs who partnered in the past providing office space to Diaspora - we could approach them and offer them hosting hackatons as a part of popularization/recruitment campaigns.

This could be an initial handshake between the Diaspora community and the business.
We could make a list of FLO software consulting companies and approach them about this and later launch a global event&job board.

We can make this all happen faster if we come up with viral idea like the one of Ice bucket challenge for quicker approaching the target people (;