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Seriously, every time there's a Facebook story on /. so many hours of potential productivity are lost to bitching. Why not use that time actively helping an alternative to what so many of you apparently despise? And if you don't care about or use social networks at all, rest assured that the millions who do by and large don't care about your sanctimonious complaints.

There was no "launch", this was an alpha code release. Alpha code often has bugs, sometimes major. They even called it a "Developer Release". So I don't understand the uproar about *gasp* bugs in alpha code! If they had branded it beta code then I'd be more concerned with fundamental bugs, but even the developers said it had security bugs when they released it:

http://www.joindiaspora.com/2010/09/15/developer-release.html

Feel free to try to get it running on your machines and use it, but we give no guarantees. We know there are security holes and bugs, and your data is not yet fully exportable. If you do find something, be sure to log it in our bugtracker, and we would love screenshots and browser info.

I don't think "that it was open source that made people think they ought to test and review code". I think that open source makes it possible (not necessary) to increase the total number of people able to review the code, by orders of magnitude. The diaspora team has 4 people. The total number of forks in github is 403, with over 2500 watchers.

Except for the fact that's it not just them - they have a lot of connections with NYU Computer Science and the downtown New York startup community.

They also hired a consultant to help with UI:
http://www.joindiaspora.com/2010/08/26/overdue-update.html

Disclosure: I work for NYU Computer Science, but I'm not involved with Diaspora in any way (beyond rooting for it).

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 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 their email isn't hacked, their bank account isn't drained, and they can still play Farmville.

I will give Diaspora a fair chance but for how long the Facebook privacy fiasco has been going on it's hard not to be at least a little jaded about social networks.

Things we are working on next for our Alpha in October:

• Facebook Integration
• Internationalization
• Data Portability

from http://www.joindiaspora.com/2010/09/15/developer-release.html

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 screenshot) so that your coworkers and your drinking buddies see different things. 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.

Yet your friends use Facebook. Not too bright of them now is it? I mean, if I was actually pretty obesity concerned I wouldn't eat donuts and pork rinds all day.

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 screenshot) so that your coworkers and your drinking buddies see different things.

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.

Imagine facebook levels of popularity but with encryption, privacy, and control as primary factors of computing for the masses.

As I understand it, this is essentially what the Diaspora project is trying to do. Hopefully they'll succeed. (And maybe smooth out some of those concerns that the name is inappropriate.)

I agree that an OSS centralized social networking service like Facebook would likely be a mess. A distributed network like Diaspora would eliminate the problems you pointed out. That is, assuming the interfaces between the nodes are well defined and stable.

I never joined Facebook because I generally don't trust free services. They eventually have to make money and that generally comes from selling their users' information but an open, distributed network allows for free services for those who don't mind trading their information for the service and paid services for those of us who want more privacy.

I put my hopes in diaspora.

Perhaps a new open social network site, hosted and linked across many ISP's, with open source code with clear locked into client agreements with pre-defined and limited revenue methods can be created. A place where clients and service providers can safely mix, all absent "They trust me, Dumb fucks".

You mean like the Diaspora Project?

Home server isn't required?

From the faq:

Q: Where will the data of the users be hosted? On servers you buy/rent?

A: Short answer: Where ever you like.

We think most people will use some sort of hosting provider to host their seed. This could be a traditional web host, a cloud based host, an ISP, or a friend.

For the less technically inclined, we hope to provide a one-click hosting service like Wordpress.com to make creating a seed as easy as possible.

I don't know where your "chained-to-the-floor portables we have now" comment is coming from. My laptop has 6 hour battery. An iPad has 10 hours. Not exactly chained to the floor.

As to why the home phone should be a server, that question stands the world on its head. There is no reason to keep phones dumb. Not even financial reasons are valid any more.

Let me ask it another way then. Why should anyone have a server in their home to begin with?

There's none. A hosting service, either a traditional service (i.e. you get space on a computer that runs various servers to use) or a simple service (e.g. blog hosting like wordpress.com or blogger, or even facebook) is all people need. You don't have to control these machines, as long as you can easily import and export your data to and from them. (Coincidently this where wordpress.com beats the living crap out of facebook.)

As long as you have interoperability (ideally though open standards, but that's not strictly necessary), you avoid lock in, and that's all you need to do.

I can't help but notice--no one has mentioned diaspora yet, the open source distributed facebook replacement on the way.

I agree completely, just need to address one point.

What about a social network that is decentralized? I'm sure that will become popular one day. What about connecting to your friends based upon your own personal directory of people you have some sort of relationship with

http://www.joindiaspora.com/

It seems as though they have a prototype running. See "current state." http://joindiaspora.com/project.html

they haven't started programming it!

From their Project page:

We already have a rudimentary prototype of Diaspora running on our machines.

One of my friends showed me this project. It looks promising. http://www.joindiaspora.com/

Essentially, a peer to peer open source social network

I actually find this good news as I was worried there for a minute that Facebook was actually 'getting it' finally and was going to revamp its privacy policies in wake of all of the nasty criticism and high profile people leaving the site. Projects like Diaspora* http://joindiaspora.com/ can hopefully fill in the gaps that Facebook seems oblivious to. I have heard the criticisms that Diaspora* will be only for the technically adept - but I can see companies popping up to fill in the gaps if the market arises.

"The Network Effect" makes FB place incredibly useful and of course power users can wade through everything and get some decent privacy from the service - but I long for the day when that site is clearly in a myspace-esqe death spin as normal users start fleeing for better alternatives. It is the net; everything dies, so it goes. No juggernaut (AOL, Yahoo, Microsoft, Napster, Myspace....) has been able to tame it. Facebook will be no different - and all the faster with their current disregard for their userbase.

You're not the only one who has opted out of Facebook. About a week ago, I deleted all of my pictures, all of my old posts (that took a lot of clicking), all of my group affiliations, and almost all of my personal information. I'll maintain the account just to let people I've lost touch with find me. The only things I post there now are links to stories about what's wrong with Facebook, and its potential replacements. I won't comment on or click "like" on anybody else's postings. I've changed my bio information to state that I do not approve of Facebook's privacy policy changes and that I'm only maintaining my account to allow old friends to make initial contact with me.

The recent news about diaspora interests me, and I'll be keeping my eye on that project. I'm looking forward to seeing what they come out with at the end of summer. I enjoyed using Facebook until their privacy policy changes led me to stop, and I hope to see future social media options that lack Facebook's undesirable features and policies.

Take a look at http://www.joindiaspora.com/ .

Rather than posting redundant information, you should have participated in the conversation two and a half hours ago.

Take a look at http://www.joindiaspora.com/ .

You should also take a look at http://www.joindiaspora.com/ .

There's a new project called Diaspora which is just this. They already have more than $10 000 funding for an free software project, and 4 guys will start working on it full time over the summer. http://joindiaspora.com/project.html

Diaspora is a project that aims to be that open and distributed alternative. The four students and graduates that started it have already managed to raise $16k to work on it this summer.

Super super super early stage, but very interesting is Diaspora. This open source project aims to create a completely decentralized social network. It's inspired by Eben Moglen's call for us to break out of the walled gardens.

While walled gardens aren't going away, I really hope this project is at least partially successful giving people back control of their own data.