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MySpace took off because it was first where your favorite bands were and then where all the people you met at shows were. Facebook took off because it was where everyone at your university organized their social lives. Diaspora was where the privacy conscious nerds were, which is a big draw for privacy conscious nerds and pretty much no one else. I think a distributed social network could succeed, but it'd have to find a community a large number of people are/want to be a part of to be early adopters.