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Diaspora On Schedule, One Month In

Posted by timothy on from the repatriate-repatriate dept.

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.

6 of 90 comments (clear)

  1. I don't understand by deathtopaulw · · Score: 5, Insightful

    How can you have a website where you broadcast your most intimate thoughts and personality traits to hundreds of people willingly at the same time and still retain privacy? Or are they just vowing to not sell our info to advertisers? This would be stupid if they wanted the website to last more than a few seconds without a subscription service.

    1. Re:I don't understand by SilverHatHacker · · Score: 4, Insightful

      It's GPG encrypted, for one thing. Also, the info-sharing settings actually work, and don't get changed by default every couple months. As far as funding goes, so far the plan is to offer a paid hosting service, or let you run your own server.

      --
      Funny may not give karma, but +5 Informative never made anyone snort coffee out their nose.
  2. Personal web server? by MichaelSmith · · Score: 5, Insightful

    The wiki article describes Diaspora as an open source personal web server, but for a lot of people their home machine, if they have one, is about the most insecure place to put things. For a lot of other people they have a work machine they never install stuff on, and an iphone, on which the userland belongs to Steve Jobs.

    I have a personal web server. It serves http and rss. But I am not normal and I can't see myself installing this thing.

    --
    http://michaelsmith.id.au
    1. Re:Personal web server? by Rotworm · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I've always imagined it would roll out in a manner similar to Wordpress. You can host your own by installing from either source or package (if offered by your distribution). Or you can sign-up for an account at their hosted service. IANAC (I am not a cryptographer) but I guess the hosted service is still secure due to the GPG implementation.

  3. Re:good luck by Saeed+al-Sahaf · · Score: 5, Insightful

    the vast majority of facebook users are not concerned with privacy

    This is a point that seems lost on most Slashdotters: Most of the people that use Facebook are quite happy with its "privacy" rules. They willingly supply personal information, and have the expectation that it will be spread about. Thus, Facebook is mostly a problem for those that don't use it.

    --
    "Who are in control, they are not in control of anything - they don't even control themselves!" - Glen Beck
  4. Re:This is the future. by fat_mike · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Your signature alone tells me about your grasp of things that the majority of people don't care about.

    Asterisk is a joke in the home. The last time I checked I could get phone service for $9.95 a month and buy a cheap analog phone for $15.00. Do you really expect people to pay $830 for a 24 station analog card along with the computer and other crap they'll need to run Asterisk?

    This Diaspora is nothing more than playing catch-up. Remember when you HAD to be on AOL then Craigslists was the poop, then MySpace, then Facebook and now Twitter? Its the idea and correct implementation and marketing that made those successful for the given period of time they were.

    This is another project trying to collect the scraps from the tables of the big boys that will eventually be noted as, "Whatever happened to Diaspora? They haven't updated their logo contest in eight months!"