Amazing if they actually made $200k last two years. I still can't believe people think this is a lot of money for a software project.

They didn't -- the $200K ran out a year ago: http://www.readwriteweb.com/cloud/2011/10/the-state-of-diasp...

Agreed. Four founders, that's $25k/year each for 2 years.

Was labour the only cost? There must have been other costs also.

It would have been most of the cost. I believe they got free office space in an incubator. Heroku's spotlight page said they used 9 dynos, which would have been only a few hundred a month in hosting costs.

Not exactly... http://thenextweb.com/socialmedia/2011/10/12/diaspora-asks-u...