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Diaspora On Schedule, One Month In
schlick writes with word that the Diaspora project (last mentioned here several weeks back) has an update with a demo and some screen shots. Diaspora's goal: to provide social networking without the privacy invasion possibilities inherent in sites like Facebook.
I don't have the networking expertise to comment on scaling or load issues, but at least this looks usable and practical enough that people would actually use it. I also like the whole host-it-wherever-you-like angle; when I first heard about this I was worried it would be like an insecure version of freenet, with content being hosted in a constant cache/request loop betwen users.
Emotions! In your brain!
Because the system will be decentralized. You can control your own seed, meaning your own data, and who it gets shared with. They aren't making a Facebook clone. Actually, there will be Facebook interaction, so you can host your own profile and connect with Facebook users ... it's listed in their timeline if you actually read their update.
I've spoken to the devs, there will be hubs. Think wordpress.com vs wordpress. You can host it yourself, or at one of many locations. So they cater to both audiences, and you can always move your stuff off the hub onto your own box, or a server you have, whenever. Contrast with Facebook :)
The same way you control what people do with data you put anywhere else on the internet: you don't. The point is you get to pick who does get to see your data, unlike on Facebook where you unwittingly share all your data whenever you play a game, or visit a partner website, or they change their policies and make previously private data public. If you could have 100% complete control it would be called anti-social networking, I suppose.
The big deal isn't that your data is magically safe, but that all sharing of that data is entirely on your terms.
My webcomic
It's a spammer running a script. The sentence in the comment has been posted already in the discussion, and it just reposted it to look more like a legitimate comment, to encourage people to click the link.
Michael, maybe you could try and get in contact with the diaspora guys (since they're just starting to code and all) so that you can make sure this future is possible (making much more likely for this idea of "open social network" to happen)
There's a summit coming up where all the open source projects focusing on distributed social networking will be getting together to discuss that. Appleseed and Diaspora will be there (along with a bunch more). Should be very interesting!
Michael Chisari
The Appleseed Project - http://opensource.appleseedproject.org/