This is absolutely what I think HN gives them too little credit for.

Their first release, they released on time, as promised. It was far from a complete release, terribly buggy, full of security holes. But they shipped. They're updating on their status, they've fixed all reported security holes with their first release, and they're announcing a second iteration soon, inspite of such negative feedback the first time around. All of these are the qualities of a successful startup, they were simply hyped too much, too early. This doesn't mean they're less capable as a team, just too open to scrutiny.

"This is absolutely what I think HN gives them too little credit for."

You think a company that got $200k in startup funding and accepted tons of media attentions via interviews before even writing a single line of code should get more credit?

No. I see tons of far more experienced developers here on HN putting their efforts in their projects with far less to start off with and absolutely no media attention on their side. I'm willing to be extremely lenient on any shortcomings in such scenarios because of what they are up against.

But Diaspora was in control of how much hype they got and they got some serious leg ups that few people ever get in their lifetime. They accepted the NYTimes piece. They got accepted at Kickstarter (a feat which I have said before, is a serious aberration in terms of the projects they allow) and subsequently received tons of funding despite having such little work experience.

So considering the resources, I don't think it's out of the ordinary for developers and casual observers to expect a well thought out development.

Is that giving them too little credit? I mean, it's only been six months, and they have a quarter of a million dollars. Not quitting, in those circumstances, is not exactly heroic.

The hype isn't what makes them less capable as a team, their code does. That's the thing about people's response to the code, it was symbolic of their capabilities, and as such, people are rightly critical of whether they'll be the ones to pull this off, especially when others have been working on this problem for years now.

Let's also remember that at this point, they're not a startup, they're an open source project, and we should judge them as such. And with open source, the only thing that matters is code.