Sounds like another Diaspora in the making. Another project with bold plans that are too bold and simply don't work nicely in reality.

Think about it, if anyone can set up their own publishing server for very little, we're going to see lots of crappy, underused or badly maintained servers with few users and an oligopoly with the majority of users making up most of the non-awful servers.

Plus, Diaspora was pretty terrible from a project management point of view. They took in thousands of dollars and made a ridiculously simple web app in one of the easiest frameworks with a bunch of security holes... after a few months.

Apparently, it's a lot better now, but that initial development failure clearly shows no one thought it through enough architecturally and it was all about the hype of the noble central idea.

It was like a bunch of architects who could only design exceptional skyscrapers being told to build a bunch of houses for the poor, only to take in far too much money and end up having just a bare skeleton of a house up after a year. And the front door doesn't have a lock.