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http://diasporaproject.org/

...when announcing that Version X of something is released, to actually spare 3-4 words in the summary to give us readers a clue what the flying fuck the "something" you're talking about is, so we can decide whether we want to read further?

Even TFA manages to avoid saying what 'Diaspora' actually is or offering a link back to a descriptive page.

(To save others the trouble of Googling it's either an open-source social network, a freeware Battlestar Galactica game, a migraine-inducing SF Novel by Greg Egan or something to do with Jewish history... By a process of deduction, I'm going with the former...)

Come on guys, the point of a news site is to tell people things they don't know,.

Diaspora (the social network) made the mistake of not knowing how to actually write code (Kickstarter basically funded their learning), then they promised not to be sleazy like Facebook, but used an invite only system, claimed to be decentralised (though invite-only proves this wrong), and proceeded to keep their code closed source until recently, when it became acutely apparent that no one gave a damn. Protip: I still don't give a damn. PHP is horrible, a security nightmare, I will not run that crap on my personal machines to make it into a node.

Sadly, the game name, "Diaspora: Shattered Armistice", is a confusingly accurate description of the other project as well. I hope the game has better adoption rate than the stillborn social network.

Seriously, does anyone use search engines before naming their crap? I know I do, hell, I manually search the trademark databases during name selection to save money on attorney fees...

I think that diaspora is a great idea but think that the angles are too blurred between http://diasporaproject.org/ and https://joindiaspora.com/.

The diasporaproject page needs some sort of overview of the architecture - on a simple level, how does it work technically?

Yet from the joindiaspora website it seems to be too technical - to attract new users we need a page which shows the social aspect of what is possible - most social network users don't care whether they own their data or not - just whether they can waste their time on a page looking at what their friends are doing, and sharing their own lives.

I would love to see this type of open system being taken up as a replacement for something like email - but for me it needs to be very simple in the first instance - just like email

join diaspora* (http://diasporaproject.org/) ... at least until it becomes second F

It's fine: http://diasporaproject.org/

There's also Friendica, which is cross-network (you can even add diaspora users to it) and contrary to diaspora will run on quite a few shared hosts: http://friendica.com/ Though public pods aren't easy to come by... care to run one? :D It may not be the fastest or the prettiest, but that's why I post the link on slashdot, and not on grandma's wall ^^ I also LOVE the tagline. "The internet is our social network." That's the spirit, and something to build on.

Also, this is a few days old and nothing is on it yet, but I'll certainly watch it: http://socialswarm.net/ We don't need more networks, we need protocols and microformats! Most of this stuff goes completely over my head, but I hope in a few years there will be tutorials for noobs, so that even I can make my own CMS interact with social networks... IMHO, apathy and resignation just isn't on. We all have text editors, so there are no excuses. Run a little node, federate some love, get down tonight.

http://friendica.com/
http://diasporaproject.org/

http://socialswarm.net/