Facebook Competitor Diaspora Revealed 306
jamie writes "A post has just gone up on Diaspora's blog revealing what the project actually looks like for the first time. While it's not yet ready to be released to the public, the open-source social networking project is giving the world a glimpse of what it looks like today and also releasing the project code, as promised. At first glance, this preview version of Diaspora looks sparse, but clean. Oddly enough, with its big pictures and stream, it doesn't look unlike Apple's new Ping music social network mixed with yes, Facebook."
I dunno, man... (Score:3, Insightful)
Facebook has things pretty much on lockdown, as far as "full feature" social networking is concerned (not to mention the fact that, if wanting to be visible on a social network, most people already have a Facebook account.) I realize that at one time, MySpace had things all sewn up as well, but still...you know what I'm getting at. Anyway, like so many other things, hopefully Diaspora will bring serious competition, and help dictate the way some things are done.
If nothing else, it could at least become a social network for FOSS folks, which would be pretty cool.
Re:I dunno, man... (Score:4, Insightful)
A social network that limits it's audience to a specific group of people isn't very 'social'. It would fail if it was only for those interested in FOSS, at least on the scale of MySpace and Facebook and I don't think that's what the designers intended. From what I recall, they just want an open network that is a little more concerned with privacy than the existing giants. Diaspora is a perfect fit for that goal.
As to being the current 'number 1', I don't think that is even a goal as of yet, but rather just getting it off the ground and out there. If it's good and follows through on it's privacy and transparency goals, it will get there on it's own as there are a large segment of users on Facebook who are very unhappy with the way their data is being handled.
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Re:I dunno, man... (Score:4, Informative)
Only amongst a small demographic (which many Slashdotters may be part of, hence it seems to you like everyone was on it). My mother never had a MySpace account, but she is on Facebook, and so are many of her friends, their children and their grandchildren, and maybe even some of their parents.
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What if facebook becomes the place that "old people" use ?
Re:I dunno, man... (Score:5, Funny)
MySpace was mostly popular among blind people. There is no other possible explanation for the "design" of users' pages.
The network effect (Score:2)
Where the usefulness of a service increases with the number of people using it.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect [wikipedia.org]
i.e. everyone but Facebook, are money down the drain. They would have to fuck up monumentally to break the effect.
Re:The network effect (Score:4, Interesting)
If a social network were geared toward linking groups of three for some maximum objective (business partnerships, sex, friendship, counseling, etc.) then by the same reasoning its value should vary as the cube of the number of nodes, and then this thricebook would kill facebook.
So let people connect to their facebook account. (Score:2)
Just do what pidgin did and let people connect to all their social networks from the social network they control.
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Things we are working on next for our Alpha in October:
from http://www.joindiaspora.com/2010/09/15/developer-release.html [joindiaspora.com]
Re:I dunno, man... (Score:5, Insightful)
Diaspora looks like it's trying to be the next round in the Social Networking Site Cycle, which goes like this:
1. A social networking site starts up, allowing friends to stay in touch and contact one another, with good privacy rules to prevent bad guys from seeing that info, with maybe a few ads to pay for things but no other payments involved.
2. The social networking site (which is good at what it does) is successful in attracting new members. Network effects make the member base swell massively, while any competitors become passe.
3. The founders of the site want to profit from their hard work, so they go public or get VC funding.
4. The investors attempt to "monetize" the network via advertising, bloatware that people can pay to add on, reducing privacy rules, and so forth.
5. The social network becomes a slow bloated totally non-private piece of crap.
6. A couple of developers think "Hey, the dominant social network is a bloated totally non-private piece of crap. We should create something that does this better." And the cycle begins again.
This has happened at least once already with MySpace, and it's fair to say that Facebook is sitting somewhere around step 5.
Re:I dunno, man... (Score:5, Informative)
Re:I dunno, man... (Score:5, Insightful)
Bah. it's just NNTP all over again
Re:I dunno, man... (Score:4, Insightful)
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Diaspora aims for good privacy, I take that over all those fancy social networks.
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Wise words.
Sixdegrees -> Friendster -> Orkut -> Myspace -> Facebook. And I know I am missing at least one or two in there.
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Facebook isn't slow. It serves up error messages rather quickly.
competitors and/or file types (Score:3, Interesting)
Google might pick it up. Android shows Google's willingness to adopt openness as a "scorched earth" policy against competitors who're doing end runs around Google's core business. All the other social networking sites like hi5 might adopt it for strength in numbers vs. facebook. You could even imagine IM programs like skype jumping on the social networking bandwagon through variation on Disapora's protocols.
Also, friends-to-friend file sharing is the untapped killer app for social networking, as easy inv
Re:I dunno, man... (Score:5, Informative)
But it is of course capitalized. Kind of.
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African Diaspora than the Jewish Diaspora...
But is that with or without the coconut?
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Or the people who won't use it because they don't know how to pronounce it
Or the people who won't use it because they don't know how to spell it
Some of my hickiest relatives tell me to go check out their "myspace" page, or their "facebook" page. I can't ever imagine any of them telling me to go check out their "Die-Ass-Pour-A" page
Great concept, lousy name
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That will be nice for the rest of us then if it keeps illiterate morons away!
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The literate morons aren't much more fun.
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So everyone knows that Google is a mispelling of Googol, which is the name of the number 10^100?
Every Wikipedia user knows the definition of "wiki"?
Every one of the millions of Orkut users know the name came from its creator, Orkut Büyükkökten?
People don't type URL, they use search engines.
diaespora: first result.
diesporah: first
Re:I dunno, man... (Score:4, Insightful)
Also sounds slightly like diarrhea mixed with spore
Well you just described Facebook so I guess the name is appropriate.
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The name is fine... one you have heard it a couple times.
Probably "The Beatles" sounded like a weird name of a music group and one time.
Re:I dunno, man... (Score:5, Insightful)
I expect that a significant percentage of Google users don't know where that name came from and wouldn't care to find out, that the minds of Amazon users don't often turn to South America, and Dunkin' Donuts regulars don't often consider actually dunking their doughnuts. Once a word transforms into a brand, we tend to ignore the word.
Besides the fact that people don't care about words, meanings of words still get twisted and change meaning in the public's mind. Given we're talking about anti-Jewish/Zionist sentiments, I'll point out that many Muslim hardliners frequently misuse the term "holocaust" [terrorism-info.org.il] to define obviously inequivalent events. They have also adopted the word "diaspora" [wikipedia.org] for their own cause.
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Google and Amazon sound cool though. Admittedly I've stopped giggling every time I hear someone say "Wii" now so I guess that given enough time, Diaspora could become an every day type word to me. Now that I know the meaning it does seem cooler, rather than diarrhea-like.
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Predictable comment there AC, but sorry, I'm not anti-Semitic. I have nothing against someone just because they happen to be a Jew (or Christian, or Muslim or whatever). I do however hate the concept of religion in general.
Looks great! Maybe I'll download it and start... (Score:4, Funny)
Oh, it's written in ruby? Never mind. /starts language war
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Software is only part of the equation (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Software is only part of the equation (Score:5, Informative)
Re:Software is only part of the equation (Score:5, Informative)
The goal is to have a facebook equivalent without a central organization: they do not need a ton of servers because they don't want to host the users data.
They want each and every user to be responsible for where he wants to host his own data, be it on a home server, on a rented remote server, or via a specialized service provider.
They want social web to be a bit like e-mail, where no single entity owns the whole system.
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Oh ugh, that sounds horrible.
So what happens when some chunk of users lose access or data because of a third party screwup? Is that possible in this system? It sounds like it. What happens when the first 'free' service that gets a fair amount of users has a public data leak?
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Oh ugh, that sounds horrible.
So what happens when some chunk of users lose access or data because of a third party screwup? Is that possible in this system? It sounds like it. What happens when the first 'free' service that gets a fair amount of users has a public data leak?
What happens when facebook does?
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What happens when facebook does?
People understand that. Damnit, facebook is down. But when you split the community, people will say, "Hey, is diaspora down?" non-techie: "Dunno what's wrong, it works for me, maybe your computer is busted."
Service is down people understand.
Some part of the service that isn't actually connected to the service is down... People won't understand that.
It's like trying to get your computer tweaked for gaming. People pop in the DVD and expect it to install and run. When a cry
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No more than the typical e-mail user has to set up and manage their own server.
(On the other hand, the typical BitTorrent user sets up and manages their own server just fine, that being the nature of P2P. So it's not impossible.)
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Now look at it from a social network point of view. You have to join and filter massive amounts of data that may or
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Yeah - somehow I think their business plan included the tell tale "???????" before the Profit! step.
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Handing third parties control over your data is very different if you have a choice of who you want to trust.
If this project gains traction and achieves its goals, there would be maybe a dozen big providers and hundreds of little ones where most people would be hosting their data, maybe most ISPs would also provide such a service for their customers (with their own front-end and everything), and a handful of nerds will run their own server at home.
Most people don't really care about privacy of their data, a
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From what I understand, you don't allow other seeds to access your data: your seed pushes your data to the other seeds.
For example, when you update your status, your seed will send it to all the seeds of your friend.
Other seeds have no reason to share your data, except with the friend you have there. And if you don't trust the operator of a particuliar seed (gdiaspora, iDiaspora, mydiaspora.ru...) you should be able to configure your seed not to send it anything that you set as highly private (or whatever y
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And if specialized service providers sprout up to host this data, wouldn't that be creating the same situation that this software is supposed to be trying to get away from: other having control of your data?
So, would you rather 50 or 60 service providers, each of which host a couple hundred thousand people, or one that hosts 500 million? Which is more dangerous, overall, from a privacy perspective? And if people can switch providers easily (which is another goal) providers will have to compete on privacy protection since if they mess up, people will just take their data elsewhere.
It's like having a free market vs. a monopoly. Just because the free market doesn't eliminate money doesn't mean it's not better.
Competence! (Score:2)
And do you honestly expect the typical FB user to do that - set up and manage their own server?
So it will be a social network for people who are at least semi-competent with technology (or at least are friends with such a person). Sounds good to me - I already run a web server at home, and the kids know how to put stuff onto it.
I tried MySpace for a few days; told them to wipe my account (it was before they had an option for leaving). Tried FaceBook for a month or so, then zombified my account.
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Of course they need users, but they also need a central organization and a LOT of servers.
Undoubtedley the will, but the system is designed to be distributed. Anyone can add a machine as a server. If enough people do it they might get somewhere - it worked for bittorrent.
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If this really wants to be a "competitor" to AOL messaging they are going to need a lot more than just software. Of course they need users, but they also need a central organization and a LOT of servers. AOL is more than just a software interface, they have a massive # of globally distributed data centers that cost a ton of money. I doubt any one organization is going to put the same amount of resources behind this project. More than likely, if this amounts to anything it won't be a AOL competitor but i
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It's not a perfect analogy...
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I don't really know anyone who uses AOL's IM software/service, I do occasionally hear people in the US mention it though.
Here in Sweden ICQ was king of the hill until MS started pushing MSN Messenger more seriously (and bundling it with their desktop OS) at which point those who weren't already using ICQ started using MSN Messenger, after a couple of years of this ICQ was pretty much dead with everyone migrated over to MSN.
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You don't have a clue what you're talking about. The whole point is that I can host my very own Diaspora node and anybody on any other Diaspora node can link to me.
Your statement is like saying "If Apache really wants to be a competitor to Geocities they need to have massive numbers of servers like Yahoo does!".
DIaspora does not need centrally administered computing resources to work. Sure, if you are hosting the Diaspora node of a celebrity you might need a server farm, but most people could host their D
Presumptuous title much? (Score:4, Insightful)
All flash, no substance. (Score:5, Informative)
I gave the developer preview code a run today, and all my hopes as to what Diaspora could be died. It took too long to produce so little that everyone's outrage at facebook's privacy has been compartmentalized into a hollywood movie on the subject, and thus rendered irrelevant.
To be a seed you are going to need a hosting provider that supports ruby on rails with a freakishly huge list of gem dependencies, that is also running the thin webserver - that's right it doesn't work on apache (parts of it worked, but most of the ajax stuff didn't because it requires the eventmachine interface). In fact, installing all the dependencies on an ubuntu server running a LAMP stack still required an extra 350+Mb of extra packages as all the ruby and mongodb dependencies, for a so far tiny web application. Talk about bloatware!
So although it may look good, it's been put together by crApple fanboys, aka morons. WTF were they smoking at burning man to make them think this was worth it? Gimme some of that sh*t!
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i still have hope that someone will have an all text version
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Yeah. I read their "Questions from Luis Villa" (wth? Can't paste into this edit window w/Chrome?) blog post at the beginning of the summer and I didn't think it was going to work out so well. Undergrad summer enthusiasm, rejection/unawareness of earlier efforts.
And here we are. I wonder if they'll be able to collect their KickStarter money (wotta scam that turned out to be) because they met their "promise" (whatever we release will be open-source, yay (note the absence of a specific feature list in the
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So everyone in the world doesn't have a compatible server to run a seed on... The idea is that the geek in each group will.
You clearly had one that you could run it on, I have one that I can run it on (and thus my friends and their friends can readily use my seed, which can connect to your seed, etc. etc.)
I don't disagree that not running on apache is a load of bollocks but I also think you're blowing the requirements way out of proportion. 350Mb of packages to run it? that's nothing compared to the gigs up
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So Diaspora will become the new MS Windows, and Facebook will become the new Linux. Sound odd?
Consider the number of comments posted here of the form: "I got SO fucking sick of answering Windows questions for my parents and friends that I finally convinced them to use Linux. And they love it."
Then consider whether you really want to be "the social network support guy" for a hundred of your family & closest friends.
And, incidentally, I have to chuckle like Beavis on principle at the statement "my frie
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Ok, time to return to Appleseed [appleseedproject.org], the distributed social networking software which already is in development for several years now, already has working beta-servers, and is probably much closer to a final release than Diaspora.
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Awesome! (Score:4, Funny)
Re:Awesome! (Score:5, Funny)
I just checked. Richard Stallman doesn't want to be your friend.
It's the protocols, stupid! (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't care at all about the source code being released. Sure, they've released some Ruby code, which you can run, but that's not the important bit. We don't all use SMTP because Sendmail is open source (although that did help adoption), we use it because the protocols are well documented and different implementations can all interoperate. Release the protocol specs as RFCs, merge in feedback, and encourage independent implementations. Until there are two independent implementations, the protocol isn't worth anything.
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I generally agree with you, except to add that for something like this, data mobility is still really important. You have to be able to easily move your account to some random other Diaspora node relatively easily or you will be stuck with your DIaspora provider and whatever kinds of garbage they want to foist on you.
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Moving data from one node to another could be part of the protocol. Server A says to server B "give me this user's stuff". It would be the smart way to handle transfers anyway.
Re:It's the protocols, stupid! (Score:5, Insightful)
If we had a standardized protocol then everyone (Google, MS, Apple, MySpace, Facebook, random company, universities, you, me, etc etc) can integrate the service into existing products or create their own implementation.
Click here to activate Diaspora on your (Google Me, Apple Ping, MSN/Live/Bing/whatever its called today) account. You won't even have to leave Facebook because if there is a threat of users leaving they will just integrate it.
Re:It's the protocols, stupid! (Score:4, Informative)
So true. Here are some other (more mature) projects that DO put focus on protocols.
http://ostatus.org/ [ostatus.org]
http://opensource.appleseedproject.org/ [appleseedproject.org]
http://techcrunch.com/2010/05/13/onesocialweb-were-ahead-of-diaspora-in-the-creation-of-an-open-facebook/ [techcrunch.com]
See also:
http://xmpp.org/xmpp-protocols/xmpp-core/ [xmpp.org]
Open sourcing it all is a great PiratesBook (Score:2)
Business Model Still an Issue? (Score:2)
Last I checked, the hosting was either going to be you download and run it on your own server, or you pay them X dollars for them to host it for you. Is that still going to be the case? If so, this thing is dead in the water because Aunt Jane has no idea what a web server is, and she's not going to buy hosting from Diaspora when Facebook is free.
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Ad supported hosting is used for thousands of services already... Why couldn't a diaspora service provider do that?
There are lots of reasons why this may fail, but you didn't provide one, I think. As I see it, the diaspora service providers should get their profit much like Facebook does, with the exception that people can change providers and pick the one that has the features they want (be it better privacy or a wide selection of funny cat pictures).
I guess if this actually gets off the ground there would
facebook is an intranet (Score:2)
I just liked how it described facebook as an intranet. Further the article posits that facebook will follow the path of AOL. I am not agreeing or disagreeing, just sharing a link.
http://www.codinghorror.com/blog/2007/06/avoiding-walled-gardens-on-the-internet.html [codinghorror.com]
So Many Different Projects (Score:4, Informative)
alt text (Score:2)
Other distributed social network happenings (Score:2)
The key to social network interoperability is the 'OStatus' suite of protocols and formats. Diaspora will be implementing this, but what really exited me [google.com] the other day was the first open source implementations of OStatus communication between Status.net (wot powers identi.ca, etc) and itself (screencast is available via the link above) based on the Federated Social Web's SWAT0 test, and then shortly afterwards other systems (MiniMe). Work is under way to implement this in other systems such as ELGG, Drupal,
tech: ruby and mongoDB (Score:2)
Well those are current and trendy. But is it the best? I suppose php and mysql is too boring.
Those buzzwords don't fit my router! (Score:4, Interesting)
And here I was thinking that the likes of Diaspora could be nicely installed on my router [dd-wrt.com]. With a load of luck and a pitchfork I might be able to get it on there because this router has more memory than my previous laptop but you might as well forget about getting this incarnation of Diaspora running on a WRT54GL. If lightning had not struck last month I'd still be running one of those with no plans to replace it until, well, lightning would strike.
I will try to keep an eye on what they are doing but I'm really more interested in the protocols and APIs they use and develop. One it all settles down I'd create something which interacts with their implementation without all the buzz they deem necessary in some nice, compact and high performance language. It might even fit on a WRT54GL then which would give it an instant base of who knows how many nodes...
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Are there a load of open source social networks? I wasn't aware of any (not that I've looked past the articles on /.)
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While the source being open is pretty important, the really important thing is that anybody can host a Diaspora node and link to anybody hosted on any other Diaspora node. And Diaspora will also include ways to link to people on things like Facebook. The idea is that just because all your friends are using X, you can still be linked to them effectively without using X.
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Right, agreed, but Open Source will encourage developers to get involved. If a critical mass of them do (as in Linux Distro Critical Mass)
then they can hopefully start selling people on the privacy aspects of it. Of course just as with open source a lot of people don't seem
to care about privacy either. But, who knows, perhaps with the open aspects of the system you'll get some killer app that will draw in
the masses that don't care about the underlying principles. I'm not saying it's a sure bet but even Linu
Re:Another one? (Score:5, Funny)
Of course there are open source social networks. I cannot believe you don't know GNU Social [gnu.org]!
Re:Another one? (Score:4, Informative)
The only one I'm aware of is Appleseed [appleseedproject.org]. It's also distributed, it's in development for several years now, has working beta-servers, and is probably much closer to a final release than Diaspora.
privacy (Score:5, Insightful)
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That's because the competitors to AOL provided additional features and services that people actually cared about. Pretty much no one using Facebook cares about whether or not the platform is open source, being able to run their own node or any of the other supposed selling points of Diaspora.
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That's because the competitors to AOL provided additional features and services that people actually cared about.
Actually, no they didn't. In terms of user experience, AOL mail was better than Internet email for quite a while. People did care about openness, but only indirectly. For example, corporations cared about being able to host their own email server and not be dependent on AOL for the infrastructure. Individuals then cared about being able to communicate with these corporations, and so on.
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Actually, no they didn't.
Actually, yes they did. The biggest selling point was you could now check your email anywhere and all you would need is your web browser instead of needing AOL installed on the computer.
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You're several years too late. You're thinking of webmail, which was a later transition. People moved from AOL (or CompuServe, or BBS) mail to SMTP hosted by their company, ISP, or even by AOL, long before webmail became popular. Checking your mail from another computer just wasn't that interesting to most people until the web was a lot more common, which happened a good five or so years after AOL and CompuServe abandoned their proprietary mail systems and moved to supporting SMTP out of the box.
Webmail
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I don't know. I think the lack of bells and whistles might be what causes some people to look for an alternative. I've quit using Facebook because of the bells, the whistles, the endless posts of what my friends like, pleas to like things that I don't like, requests to join groups I've got no interest in, and all of it from people I haven't had an actual conversation with or seen in 20 years, or even worse from friends of theirs that I've never met at all. If Diaspora strips social networking back to it's b
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Just kick all those people you don't care about off your account. Better yet, don't accept friend requests if you don't actually want to be a friend. Apps can be ignored, so hit the ignore button on Farmville and the like to silence that, then uninstall all the apps you don't need or want.
Don't put any private information up there and you will never have to worry about anything private being released.
People don't care about privacy enough to quit Facebook. Diaspora is destined to wither and die.
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You realize that you can do *all of that* today with Facebook, right?
This seems like it's more a comment on how you're easily peer-pressured into accepting friend requests from people you don't like, and don't care to see updates from, and wish that technology would protect you from having to
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And then there's privacy. I know that I could scare a few people into Diaspora just by showing how much my (entirely unrelated) friends can see about them on Facebook. Most of my friends are actually pretty privacy concerned.
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How about contextual sharing? I.e. being able to decide exactly who sees what, through a simple interface (See the tabs on the top in this [joindiaspora.com] screenshot) so that your coworkers and your drinking buddies see different things.
If that feature is enough of a reason for people to switch to Diaspora Facebook will probably just create its own implementation of it. Facebook is big enough that it doesn't really have to innovate to stay ahead anymore.
And then there's privacy. I know that I could scare a few people into Diaspora just by showing how much my (entirely unrelated) friends can see about them on Facebook. Most of my friends are actually pretty privacy concerned.
Most of the people I've spoken to aren't aware of the privacy issues with Facebook and out of that group, many "have nothing to hide" and making them care has so far been unsuccessful. Your average user, which is who you want using your product, doesn't care about their privacy as long as
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That is utterly correct. It's too late. Facebook has hit critical mass and Dispora is too late to the party
What would prevent you from making a Facebook page that essentially said:
Hey, this is IndustrialComplex's page, You may reach me at Diaspora. Learn here why I won't use facebook: link link. Facebook then becomes an advertising tool for a competing service.
The friends that can't figure it out? Well, are they the kind of friends you need. The companies and the bands, etc... They WILL establish a pre
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Get my friends to join it. And then my friends' friends. And my friends' friends' friends. And their grandma.
And then Diaspora would look like a serious Facebook competition.
Then David Barksdale [slashdot.org], I hear he's looking for a new social network site to hand out at.
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