check out what these guys are doing. It seems like it's going to be BIG, and if it does, it might just kill of facebook. they already got $23k in donations for their startup, and everybody is saying "this is exactly what people have been waiting for" ...
let's just hope they pull it off.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/196017994/diaspora-the-personally-controlled-do-it-all-distr
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/12/nyregion/12about.html
the basic idea is that it's a social network, like facebook, with comments, friends, apps, groups and all the works, except it's not on a centralized server (like facebook or twitter), but in a distributed peer-to-peer secure network, somewhat like BitTorrent. they use good encryption, and the end result is going to be a new kind of social network where everybody retains ownership of their data, as opposed to some big faceless corp selling your privacy to whatever advertisement network is willing to pay.
That would be way nice.
but then, who will we direct our paranoia and ire at? (particularly when there is some eventual compromise of security)
i wonder what the numbers are in regards to people becoming invested in one social networking system and what it takes to switch to another system....
do you think the majority of facebook users would switch, given the amount of time that they have already put into it, if there isn't some significantly better feature set, rather than just some security aspect?
Quote from: Iptuous on May 12, 2010, 05:29:02 PM
but then, who will we direct our paranoia and ire at?
EACH OTHER, OF COURSE!
AND YOUR MOM!
HAW HAW!
Quote from: Triple Zero on May 12, 2010, 04:53:43 PM
check out what these guys are doing. It seems like it's going to be BIG, and if it does, it might just kill of facebook. they already got $23k in donations for their startup, and everybody is saying "this is exactly what people have been waiting for" ...
let's just hope they pull it off.
http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/196017994/diaspora-the-personally-controlled-do-it-all-distr
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/05/12/nyregion/12about.html
the basic idea is that it's a social network, like facebook, with comments, friends, apps, groups and all the works, except it's not on a centralized server (like facebook or twitter), but in a distributed peer-to-peer secure network, somewhat like BitTorrent. they use good encryption, and the end result is going to be a new kind of social network where everybody retains ownership of their data, as opposed to some big faceless corp selling your privacy to whatever advertisement network is willing to pay.
Best news I've heard all day
Quote from: Iptuous on May 12, 2010, 05:29:02 PM
but then, who will we direct our paranoia and ire at? (particularly when there is some eventual compromise of security)
It's a good point, even if it was said in jest. There are a lot of people who seem to be on facebook solely for the sake of joining "facebook is killing our privacy!!!1" facebook groups.
I will be very curious to see how this develops
I wonder if open source software threatens to pop the bubble of PI markets and ad revenue
So it's an open-source, de-centralized, nonbroken social network? Coded by 3 or 4 college kids over the summer?
WANT.
Also, they have $37,000 already, they only needed $10,000. That's AWESOME.
Was 39k when i went there. One gets the impression a fair number of people want this.
I'm not sure how they intend to solve the problem of NAT though, in bittorrent it kindof muddles through because you only need to be able to talk to a small part of the people on the network, everyone has the same data. In this it seems like you really need to be able to talk to everyone.
Also, if it has end user software you completely lose the part of social networking where it works from anywhere. You couldn't use Diaspora at a friends house, or at the library (or at school or work, but those usually block facebook, I think).
It has to be better than Facebook too, some people might sign up for it just for privacy, but social networking is only useful if the people you want to network with use it too. It needs a killer feature to draw people who don't care about privacy away from Facebook.
Quote from: Requia ☣ on May 12, 2010, 07:16:09 PM
It has to be better than Facebook too, some people might sign up for it just for privacy, but social networking is only useful if the people you want to network with use it too. It needs a killer feature to draw people who don't care about privacy away from Facebook.
Farmville v2.0
Totally calling it.
Quote from: Requia ☣ on May 12, 2010, 07:16:09 PM
It has to be better than Facebook too, some people might sign up for it just for privacy, but social networking is only useful if the people you want to network with use it too. It needs a killer feature to draw people who don't care about privacy away from Facebook.
that was the first thing i thought of, but if this works, like they say, as a shell around other SN sites like FB and Tw, then people could use it as an amalgamating resource, even if nobody they knows use it.
then as people come on, it would have added functionality native to it that would be cake...
Ah... ok yeah that would work.
Quote from: E. A. Waterhaus II on May 12, 2010, 06:30:33 PMThere are a lot of people who seem to be on facebook solely for the sake of joining "facebook is killing our privacy!!!1" facebook groups.
Yeah, and all the people threatening to leave if Facebook follows through on their nonexistent plan to charge users $14.95 / month.
Quote from: Iptuous on May 12, 2010, 08:17:54 PM
Quote from: Requia ☣ on May 12, 2010, 07:16:09 PM
It has to be better than Facebook too, some people might sign up for it just for privacy, but social networking is only useful if the people you want to network with use it too. It needs a killer feature to draw people who don't care about privacy away from Facebook.
that was the first thing i thought of, but if this works, like they say, as a shell around other SN sites like FB and Tw, then people could use it as an amalgamating resource, even if nobody they knows use it.
then as people come on, it would have added functionality native to it that would be cake...
If they implement the Facebook API, that will make it trivial for app writers to port their apps to the new platform. Also, they could use the Facebook API themselves and allow their users to transparently connect to Facebook's hub so they can remain connected to their friends over there.
That would be very feasible technology-wise, but I have no idea if it would be feasible legality-wise.
I'll join in a hot second!
I only joined Facebook to get laid, anyway. If they charge for it I'm bailing, I hate Facebook. It's stupid.
It did get me laid though.
I'm going to keep track of this. I'd abandon Facebook in a minute if this works out.
I sent them some money. They don't need it, but this way I'll get a CD automatically when it's released, and also I kind of want them to get ten times what they need just to give Facebook a kick in the teeth.
Why abandon facebook? If this is preferable, you'll end up using it more anyway <_<
Because I'm tired of all the group invitations for shit I'm not interested in, constantly having to block applications (and then another fucking version of the damn thing pops up - there must be ten "zoo" themed games by now), and all the other crap.
Facebook is now an elaborate marketing tool under the guise of social media. The fact that you can talk to friends is a secondary feature to your profile now being linked to actual fan pages. Rather than expensive and difficult market research, there's a convenient place where every person's precise tastes are available to be tailored to.
So yes, I hope this succeeds. And I will be joining.
Holy shit this could get me HECKA LAID!
Quote from: Pastor-Monkey Zucchini on May 12, 2010, 08:54:19 PM
Quote from: E. A. Waterhaus II on May 12, 2010, 06:30:33 PMThere are a lot of people who seem to be on facebook solely for the sake of joining "facebook is killing our privacy!!!1" facebook groups.
Yeah, and all the people threatening to leave if Facebook follows through on their nonexistent plan to charge users $14.95 / month.
Quote from: Iptuous on May 12, 2010, 08:17:54 PM
Quote from: Requia ☣ on May 12, 2010, 07:16:09 PM
It has to be better than Facebook too, some people might sign up for it just for privacy, but social networking is only useful if the people you want to network with use it too. It needs a killer feature to draw people who don't care about privacy away from Facebook.
that was the first thing i thought of, but if this works, like they say, as a shell around other SN sites like FB and Tw, then people could use it as an amalgamating resource, even if nobody they knows use it.
then as people come on, it would have added functionality native to it that would be cake...
If they implement the Facebook API, that will make it trivial for app writers to port their apps to the new platform. Also, they could use the Facebook API themselves and allow their users to transparently connect to Facebook's hub so they can remain connected to their friends over there.
That would be very feasible technology-wise, but I have no idea if it would be feasible legality-wise.
http://www.joindiaspora.com//2010/04/21/a-little-more-about-the-project.html
Quote
Now that you have your information in your seed, it will connect to every service you used to have for you. For example, your seed will keep pulling tweets and you will still be able to see your Facebook newsfeed. In fact, Diaspora will make those services better! Upload an image to Flickr and your seed can automatically generate a tweet from the caption and link. Social networking will just get better when you have control over your data.
A seed will not just be all your existing networks put together, though. Decentralizing lets us reconstruct our "social graphs" so that they belong to us. Our real social lives do not have central managers, and our virtual lives do not need them. Friend another seed and the two of you can synchronize over a direct and secure connection instead of through a superfluous hub. Encryption (privacy nerds: we're using GPG) will ensure that no matter what kind of content is being transferred, you can share privately. Eventually, today's hubs could be almost entirely replaced by a decentralized network of truly personal websites.
I won't abandon Facebook until most of its users do... I use it for advertising. :lulz:
but, like pointed out in the quote from the 'about' page in hovercat's post above, using Diaspora doesn't mean abandoning Facebook...
you can use FB from within it.
Yeah but I WANT to. If a suitably more advantageous alternative exists.
Friendster -> MySpace -> Facebook -> ???
There's always the next thing. It doesn't even have to be better (hosting music on MySpace is a fuckton easier than on Facebook), it just has to be cooler.
Kids want a network their parents won't be on. Give that to them, and they'll jump ship.
It may be hard for diaspora to come to a market where most people already use facebook and they keep using it because most people use it... But i'll sign up on principle.
Also: LOL, Zuckerberg vs. Salzberg
Quote from: The Lord and Lady Omnibus Fuck on May 13, 2010, 01:08:44 AM
I won't abandon Facebook until most of its users do... I use it for advertising. :lulz:
I'm only using facebook for events and quick updates ATM, since a good portion of my SCA / Gaming buddies are on. I'm wiping my PI and interests as possible, and keeping any witty content elsewhere
I'll check out Diaspora later tonight.
People will abandon that shit in a hot second if something cooler/convenient/more fun-looking comes along.
Quote from: Weltbürger on May 13, 2010, 06:10:48 PM
It may be hard for diaspora to come to a market where most people already use facebook and they keep using it because most people use it... But i'll sign up on principle.
Also: LOL, Zuckerberg vs. Salzberg
OH I KNOW
IT'S FUNNY 'CAUSE THEY'RE BOTH JEWS, RIGHT?
Quote from: The Lord and Lady Omnibus Fuck on May 13, 2010, 06:26:03 PM
People will abandon that shit in a hot second if something cooler/convenient/more fun-looking comes along.
You said it. The way employers watch it now, I need to scour name tags off every pic and video if any change of venue is planned.
Quote from: The Lord and Lady Omnibus Fuck on May 13, 2010, 06:26:55 PM
Quote from: Weltbürger on May 13, 2010, 06:10:48 PM
It may be hard for diaspora to come to a market where most people already use facebook and they keep using it because most people use it... But i'll sign up on principle.
Also: LOL, Zuckerberg vs. Salzberg
OH I KNOW
IT'S FUNNY 'CAUSE THEY'RE BOTH JEWS, RIGHT?
Originally I was loling about the following:
Salzberg = salt mountain
Zuckerberg = sugar mountain
but never mind. your version might also be funny to some people.
Quote from: Weltbürger on May 13, 2010, 06:40:28 PM
Quote from: The Lord and Lady Omnibus Fuck on May 13, 2010, 06:26:55 PM
Quote from: Weltbürger on May 13, 2010, 06:10:48 PM
It may be hard for diaspora to come to a market where most people already use facebook and they keep using it because most people use it... But i'll sign up on principle.
Also: LOL, Zuckerberg vs. Salzberg
OH I KNOW
IT'S FUNNY 'CAUSE THEY'RE BOTH JEWS, RIGHT?
Originally I was loling about the following:
Salzberg = salt mountain
Zuckerberg = sugar mountain
but never mind. your version might also be funny to some people.
Ok,
that gave me a chuckle.
Quote from: LMNO on May 13, 2010, 06:45:36 PM
Quote from: Weltbürger on May 13, 2010, 06:40:28 PM
Quote from: The Lord and Lady Omnibus Fuck on May 13, 2010, 06:26:55 PM
Quote from: Weltbürger on May 13, 2010, 06:10:48 PM
It may be hard for diaspora to come to a market where most people already use facebook and they keep using it because most people use it... But i'll sign up on principle.
Also: LOL, Zuckerberg vs. Salzberg
OH I KNOW
IT'S FUNNY 'CAUSE THEY'RE BOTH JEWS, RIGHT?
Originally I was loling about the following:
Salzberg = salt mountain
Zuckerberg = sugar mountain
but never mind. your version might also be funny to some people.
Ok, that gave me a chuckle.
I'm with you. That was a little bit of Germowned there.
Quote from: Weltbürger on May 13, 2010, 06:40:28 PM
Quote from: The Lord and Lady Omnibus Fuck on May 13, 2010, 06:26:55 PM
Quote from: Weltbürger on May 13, 2010, 06:10:48 PM
It may be hard for diaspora to come to a market where most people already use facebook and they keep using it because most people use it... But i'll sign up on principle.
Also: LOL, Zuckerberg vs. Salzberg
OH I KNOW
IT'S FUNNY 'CAUSE THEY'RE BOTH JEWS, RIGHT?
Originally I was loling about the following:
Salzberg = salt mountain
Zuckerberg = sugar mountain
but never mind. your version might also be funny to some people.
That is actually funny. If I spoke your filthy heathen language, or you'd explained it, I might have loled.
Quote from: The Lord and Lady Omnibus Fuck on May 13, 2010, 07:15:02 PM
Quote from: Weltbürger on May 13, 2010, 06:40:28 PM
Quote from: The Lord and Lady Omnibus Fuck on May 13, 2010, 06:26:55 PM
Quote from: Weltbürger on May 13, 2010, 06:10:48 PM
It may be hard for diaspora to come to a market where most people already use facebook and they keep using it because most people use it... But i'll sign up on principle.
Also: LOL, Zuckerberg vs. Salzberg
OH I KNOW
IT'S FUNNY 'CAUSE THEY'RE BOTH JEWS, RIGHT?
Originally I was loling about the following:
Salzberg = salt mountain
Zuckerberg = sugar mountain
but never mind. your version might also be funny to some people.
That is actually funny. If I spoke your filthy heathen language, or you'd explained it, I might have loled.
That's ok. It's a perfectly clean train of thoughts: Native German-speaker => Must have stereotypes concerning jews.
Enought interest to be pissed of what I could mean, but not enough interest to actually look it up. Sucker.
Hey, now. Don't push it.
Yeah, don't push it, lord and lady!
OK, I have too little time to start another troll thread. I'm out.
Quote from: Weltbürger on May 13, 2010, 07:27:42 PM
Quote from: The Lord and Lady Omnibus Fuck on May 13, 2010, 07:15:02 PM
Quote from: Weltbürger on May 13, 2010, 06:40:28 PM
Quote from: The Lord and Lady Omnibus Fuck on May 13, 2010, 06:26:55 PM
Quote from: Weltbürger on May 13, 2010, 06:10:48 PM
It may be hard for diaspora to come to a market where most people already use facebook and they keep using it because most people use it... But i'll sign up on principle.
Also: LOL, Zuckerberg vs. Salzberg
OH I KNOW
IT'S FUNNY 'CAUSE THEY'RE BOTH JEWS, RIGHT?
Originally I was loling about the following:
Salzberg = salt mountain
Zuckerberg = sugar mountain
but never mind. your version might also be funny to some people.
That is actually funny. If I spoke your filthy heathen language, or you'd explained it, I might have loled.
That's ok. It's a perfectly clean train of thoughts: Native German-speaker => Must have stereotypes concerning jews.
Enought interest to be pissed of what I could mean, but not enough interest to actually look it up. Sucker.
I just assumed you must be a Nazi, like I do with all of you assholes from those little fucking dwarf cottages in the Black Forest.
Carve a lot of Hitler-shaped cuckoo clocks in your spare time?
Quote from: LMNO on May 13, 2010, 06:45:36 PM
Quote from: Weltbürger on May 13, 2010, 06:40:28 PM
Quote from: The Lord and Lady Omnibus Fuck on May 13, 2010, 06:26:55 PM
Quote from: Weltbürger on May 13, 2010, 06:10:48 PM
It may be hard for diaspora to come to a market where most people already use facebook and they keep using it because most people use it... But i'll sign up on principle.
Also: LOL, Zuckerberg vs. Salzberg
OH I KNOW
IT'S FUNNY 'CAUSE THEY'RE BOTH JEWS, RIGHT?
Originally I was loling about the following:
Salzberg = salt mountain
Zuckerberg = sugar mountain
but never mind. your version might also be funny to some people.
Ok, that gave me a chuckle.
Taking it a step farther, we could call it Gatorade vs. Kool-Aid. Both resemble juice-ish stereotypes, but we're really not sure if they ARE juice.
Quote from: Richter on May 13, 2010, 08:00:22 PM
Quote from: LMNO on May 13, 2010, 06:45:36 PM
Quote from: Weltbürger on May 13, 2010, 06:40:28 PM
Quote from: The Lord and Lady Omnibus Fuck on May 13, 2010, 06:26:55 PM
Quote from: Weltbürger on May 13, 2010, 06:10:48 PM
It may be hard for diaspora to come to a market where most people already use facebook and they keep using it because most people use it... But i'll sign up on principle.
Also: LOL, Zuckerberg vs. Salzberg
OH I KNOW
IT'S FUNNY 'CAUSE THEY'RE BOTH JEWS, RIGHT?
Originally I was loling about the following:
Salzberg = salt mountain
Zuckerberg = sugar mountain
but never mind. your version might also be funny to some people.
Ok, that gave me a chuckle.
Taking it a step farther, we could call it Gatorade vs. Kool-Aid. Both resemble juice-ish stereotypes, but we're really not sure if they ARE juice.
:mittens:
Finally, a solution!
Quote from: Richter on May 13, 2010, 08:00:22 PM
Quote from: LMNO on May 13, 2010, 06:45:36 PM
Quote from: Weltbürger on May 13, 2010, 06:40:28 PM
Quote from: The Lord and Lady Omnibus Fuck on May 13, 2010, 06:26:55 PM
Quote from: Weltbürger on May 13, 2010, 06:10:48 PM
It may be hard for diaspora to come to a market where most people already use facebook and they keep using it because most people use it... But i'll sign up on principle.
Also: LOL, Zuckerberg vs. Salzberg
OH I KNOW
IT'S FUNNY 'CAUSE THEY'RE BOTH JEWS, RIGHT?
Originally I was loling about the following:
Salzberg = salt mountain
Zuckerberg = sugar mountain
but never mind. your version might also be funny to some people.
Ok, that gave me a chuckle.
Taking it a step farther, we could call it Gatorade vs. Kool-Aid. Both resemble juice-ish stereotypes, but we're really not sure if they ARE juice.
:argh!:
Quote from: LMNO on May 13, 2010, 08:04:07 PM
Finally, a solution!
For shame, LMNO, for shame.
That was terrible on SO many levels. :asplode:
I stand before you, unrepentant.
Repenting a horrible, multi layered joke is a worse offense that dropping it in the first place.
btw reading a bit more about this diaspora thing, it's kind of weird ...
I still hope they succeed, really.
But the strange thing is, this little cute team of 4 college nerds has actually no real code to show for it, just a bunch of (really cool) ideas, yet they already reeled in 10 times the amount they were aiming for (YUP they got about $100k now).
Unsurprisingly, a bunch of other startups that were quietly already doing pretty much the same thing in their own time, that actually got a bunch of working prototypes ready are a littlebit less than thrilled.
For some reason this all seems to tie in with the NY Times. They published the article and made this thing (everybody everywhere really seems to be waiting for) really REALLY popular. A littlebit of Twitter and blogosphazzles did the rest.
The fishy thing, or maybe it's not really fishy but just exactly what it looks like, the NY Times is bashing Facebook left and right. Not just in de Diaspora article, but also in a lot of other articles concerning FB and privacy. [like this interesting infographic (http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2010/05/12/business/facebook-privacy.html) and this Q&A with a FB exec (http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/05/11/facebook-executive-answers-reader-questions/)]
The only thing is that I just got this sudden sinking feeling. These 4 nerds just got $100k in (pledged) donations in a couple of days, what if they're not for real? Or, assuming they are indeed for real, how do we know they're any good?
I know random groups of 4 coders can still fail spectacularly, even if they're supersmart college kids. Though from the looks of it, they got a bunch of requirements for successfull startups (http://paulgraham.com/start.html) just right (http://ycombinator.com/lib.html). Most importantly, they seem to really Love what they're doing, they're making something because they want to use it themselves and they have an idea that is something other people really want.
I hope they succeed, but so far I've seen nothing to show that they are particularly better than the other startups that have been working on pretty much the same sort of idea. And it's not the exact idea that is most important. Cause once they really take off it's bound to morph depending on what people Actually want.
In addition to that, I wanna remark, that if they're good and pull it off, I see no problem at all on tackling the "lock in" problem, that is, getting people to migrate away from Facebook. It's a social network, think of it the other way around, if you notice a whole bunch of your friends using Diaspora, wouldn't you get on it as well?
Facebook is only just starting to get some popularity here in NL, we got another, dutch-oriented social network website. So does Germany (one that has a bit more to do with schools and university, but the main function is the same), also there is LinkedIn and Twitter. The social network ecosystem isn't nearly as Facebook-dominated as you might expect from looking at a certain US demographic. Also, before Facebook, people were using MySpace for the same purpose (now it's mostly band-promo). And in the Netherlands I've seen at least two different iterations of the social network concept that were pretty popular in their times.
I was a little surprised by the amount of work they haven't done. They're supposed to be releasing it as open source -- what happened to release-early release-often? I haven't seen any code, but there's the statement that they got a version working just with twitter on their project page.
That said, if this turns out to be vaporware -- well, it indicates that people are willing to pay a total of ten thousand dollars (maybe more by the time I posted) for an equivalent that doesn't even exist, which should make everyone actually doing it at the very least motivated by the illusion* of it being lucrative. People make money on cons all the time, and it wouldn't be the first time a group of college kids got a bunch of startup money and failbombed.
Now that I've looked more into what they are trying to do, it seems a little less far-fetched. In fact, it sounds like an afternoon project (though, while I do things in afternoons, I do them in familiar languages and cut corners -- it might take months to make something like this as secure as they want it to be). They are certainly lowering the bar with the whole it-links-into-existing-networks thing, though it is a slightly funky thing to be doing since it runs counter to the stated goals, making the project into a bidirectional social network aggregator for paranoid nerds who own servers.
000, are you suggesting foul play on the part of NYT? Not to put words in your mouth, mind you -- that's just how I would parse the situation. Facebook-bashing has been the rage for quite a while, but there's really nothing visible in it for NYT to have a vendetta against facebook (not like there is for Time and Newsweek to have inexplicable boners for twitter). For the tinfoil hatters out there, facebook privacy violations are just a blurry doorway into some pretty deep shit: for instance (and this is trufax), facebook was funded by a corporation named In-Q-Tel, which is (officially) the public corporate face of the CIA.
* NB: I'm using the word 'illusion' in the assholishly pedantic denotational form, not in the colloquial form interchangable with 'delusion', because I'm having a hard time coming up with an equivalent word that works in that sentence. The distinction, for anyone who has a life, is that a delusion is provably false while an illusion's veracity is unknown.
It's worth my $5 just to make Zuckerberg feel the cold hand of fear pinching his anus for the rest of the summer. My prediction; he's going to try to sell his little empire by September.
I don't really suspect foul play, I don't really know what to think, I just noticed how this project was suddenly booming and NYT's role in it, plus their recent articles on FB.
Also, Nigel's right, it's awesome to give FB cold sweats regardless!
Quote from: LMNO on May 13, 2010, 02:23:00 PM
Friendster -> MySpace -> Facebook -> ???
There's always the next thing. It doesn't even have to be better (hosting music on MySpace is a fuckton easier than on Facebook), it just has to be cooler.
Kids want a network their parents won't be on. Give that to them, and they'll jump ship.
And parents want to be on the network their kids are on, and will thus soon follow.
Quote from: Triple Zero on May 13, 2010, 09:42:50 PM
Unsurprisingly, a bunch of other startups that were quietly already doing pretty much the same thing in their own time, that actually got a bunch of working prototypes ready are a littlebit less than thrilled.
For some reason this all seems to tie in with the NY Times. They published the article and made this thing (everybody everywhere really seems to be waiting for) really REALLY popular. A littlebit of Twitter and blogosphazzles did the rest.
Arguably they've already done the hard part - getting the mind-share is a more impressive feat than having working code at this stage. Not indefinitely, but since they're off-loading the scalability issue to the user, they can spend more time on features than optimisation. I think that simplifies their task significantly.
HEYYYY FP IS BACK :D
Look. They did something.
http://www.joindiaspora.com/2010/07/01/one-month-in.html
Looks like they have some working code. Too bad they haven't put any online yet. Or if they did, I can't see where they put it.
Looks somebody didn't read "The Cathedral and the Bazaar".
Are there any in-depth tech docs on what they're doing? As far as I understand it, a "seed" is basically communications point-of-contact for an individual... and that is software which manages authentication and message passing between different seeds? So you can run your own seed on your own hardware with an external IP address, or have a large corp host your identity for you?
I have the feeling that they're pretty much winging it.
I can't blame them for not opening up the repositories though. There's a point when getting outside help and eyes on the code is awesome. Right at the start when you're still redesigning big parts of the architecture - not so much.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-11108891
QuoteAn open alternative to Facebook will be launched on 15 September, the developers of the project have said.
Diaspora describes itself as a "privacy-aware, personally-controlled" social network.
The open-source project made headlines earlier this year when Facebook was forced to simplify its privacy settings, after they were criticised for being overly complex and confusing.
The project, developed by four US students, raised $200,000 (£140,000).
"We have Diaspora working, we like it, and it will be open-sourced on September 15th," the team wrote on their blog.
The team said they had spent the summer "building clear, contextual sharing".
Continue reading the main story
"Start Quote
I think there will be a lot of people watching to see just what the team come up with"
End Quote Maggie Shiels Technology reporter
* Read Maggie's thoughts in full
"That means an intuitive way for users to decide, and not notice deciding, what content goes to their co-workers and what goes to their drinking buddies. We know that's a hard [user interface] problem and we take it seriously."
The project was started by three computer scientists and one mathematician from New York.
Their idea of building it gained momentum earlier this year during an intense period of criticism of Facebook, the world's largest social network
"We want to put users back in control of what they share," Max Salzberg, one of the founders, told BBC News at the time.
The team turned to the fundraising site Kickstarter to raise the $10,000 they thought they would need to build the network.
In the end the team raised $200,642 from nearly 6,500 people.
Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, reportedly donated to the project.
The initial release on 15 September will be to "open-source" Diaspora, meaning that the team will make the underlying code available for anyone to see and modify.
Many believe that it will be difficult to challenge Facebook, which now has 500 million users and is currently estimated to be worth $33bn.
I'll be checking it out, at least.
Sweet.
For completeness, it seems the BBC's source for that news must have been this blog post on the Diaspora site:
http://www.joindiaspora.com/2010/08/26/overdue-update.html
sweet! glad to see this thing is still on schedule. I keep half expecting there to be some major fuckup on the token that it's being developed by a cabal of college kids. Let's try to make a good Discordian showing on launch day, eh?