Read 'More Awesome Than Money,' by Jim Dwyer. It's a history of Diaspora. It was technically OK, but had no use case.
Here's something that might work. FratNet. Get major fraternities and sororities at a big party school to use Diaspora nodes. The pitch is that the frat controls who can get on, and there's no snooping by Facebook. Expand this to frats nationally, creating a big distributed network of frat members, and, over time, alumni.
