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Facebook Competitor Diaspora Revealed

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the tremble-in-something-something dept.

jamie writes "A post has just gone up on Diaspora's blog revealing what the project actually looks like for the first time. While it's not yet ready to be released to the public, the open-source social networking project is giving the world a glimpse of what it looks like today and also releasing the project code, as promised. At first glance, this preview version of Diaspora looks sparse, but clean. Oddly enough, with its big pictures and stream, it doesn't look unlike Apple's new Ping music social network mixed with yes, Facebook."

13 of 306 comments (clear)

  1. I dunno, man... by Pojut · · Score: 3, Insightful

    Facebook has things pretty much on lockdown, as far as "full feature" social networking is concerned (not to mention the fact that, if wanting to be visible on a social network, most people already have a Facebook account.) I realize that at one time, MySpace had things all sewn up as well, but still...you know what I'm getting at. Anyway, like so many other things, hopefully Diaspora will bring serious competition, and help dictate the way some things are done.

    If nothing else, it could at least become a social network for FOSS folks, which would be pretty cool.

    --
    Living With a Nerd
    1. Re:I dunno, man... by DJRumpy · · Score: 3, Insightful

      A social network that limits it's audience to a specific group of people isn't very 'social'. It would fail if it was only for those interested in FOSS, at least on the scale of MySpace and Facebook and I don't think that's what the designers intended. From what I recall, they just want an open network that is a little more concerned with privacy than the existing giants. Diaspora is a perfect fit for that goal.

      As to being the current 'number 1', I don't think that is even a goal as of yet, but rather just getting it off the ground and out there. If it's good and follows through on it's privacy and transparency goals, it will get there on it's own as there are a large segment of users on Facebook who are very unhappy with the way their data is being handled.

    2. Re:I dunno, man... by dkleinsc · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Diaspora looks like it's trying to be the next round in the Social Networking Site Cycle, which goes like this:
      1. A social networking site starts up, allowing friends to stay in touch and contact one another, with good privacy rules to prevent bad guys from seeing that info, with maybe a few ads to pay for things but no other payments involved.
      2. The social networking site (which is good at what it does) is successful in attracting new members. Network effects make the member base swell massively, while any competitors become passe.
      3. The founders of the site want to profit from their hard work, so they go public or get VC funding.
      4. The investors attempt to "monetize" the network via advertising, bloatware that people can pay to add on, reducing privacy rules, and so forth.
      5. The social network becomes a slow bloated totally non-private piece of crap.
      6. A couple of developers think "Hey, the dominant social network is a bloated totally non-private piece of crap. We should create something that does this better." And the cycle begins again.

      This has happened at least once already with MySpace, and it's fair to say that Facebook is sitting somewhere around step 5.

      --
      I am officially gone from /. Long live http://www.soylentnews.com/
    3. Re:I dunno, man... by suso · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Also sounds slightly like diarrhea mixed with spore

      Well you just described Facebook so I guess the name is appropriate.

    4. Re:I dunno, man... by Monchanger · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I expect that a significant percentage of Google users don't know where that name came from and wouldn't care to find out, that the minds of Amazon users don't often turn to South America, and Dunkin' Donuts regulars don't often consider actually dunking their doughnuts. Once a word transforms into a brand, we tend to ignore the word.

      Besides the fact that people don't care about words, meanings of words still get twisted and change meaning in the public's mind. Given we're talking about anti-Jewish/Zionist sentiments, I'll point out that many Muslim hardliners frequently misuse the term "holocaust" to define obviously inequivalent events. They have also adopted the word "diaspora" for their own cause.

    5. Re:I dunno, man... by novium · · Score: 3, Insightful

      Facebook once had an extremely limited audience- college students. And only students of those universities that Facebook had expanded to. That did not stop it from taking off like crazy. I actually kind of miss those days. I'd be more than happy to leave facebook to my parents, their friends, my young cousins, and every random person I knew in middle and high school.

    6. Re:I dunno, man... by samjam · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Bah. it's just NNTP all over again

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      blog.sam.liddicott.com
    7. Re:I dunno, man... by iluvcapra · · Score: 3, Insightful

      History never repeats, but it does rhyme. It seems like the last 20 years in information technology have been nothing but people reinventing a college campus Unix infrastructure, except over HTML instead of VT100. Most of the real "innovation" has been in business models and the way the help desk works.

      --
      Don't blame me, I voted for Baltar.
  2. Software is only part of the equation by antifoidulus · · Score: 3, Insightful

    If this really wants to be a "competitor" to facebook they are going to need a lot more than just software. Of course they need users, but they also need a central organization and a LOT of servers. Facebook is more than just a software interface, they have a massive # of globally distributed data centers that cost a ton of money. I doubt any one organization is going to put the same amount of resources behind this project. More than likely, if this amounts to anything it won't be a facebook competitor but instead a platform for much smaller communities to use. TFA even mentions this(but its not in the summary. Of course being open source it is theoretically possible then to "transfer" your profile among communities, but that remains to be seen.

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    Monstar L
  3. Presumptuous title much? by koterica · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I don't understand how a piece of unreleased software can be considered a competitor to a service that (claims) to have 500 million active users.

  4. privacy by jDeepbeep · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Diaspora allegedly gives one more control over their data, and how it is used, because as we all know, Facebook discussing "privacy" is like McDonald's discussing "nutrition"

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    Reply to That ||
  5. It's the protocols, stupid! by TheRaven64 · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I don't care at all about the source code being released. Sure, they've released some Ruby code, which you can run, but that's not the important bit. We don't all use SMTP because Sendmail is open source (although that did help adoption), we use it because the protocols are well documented and different implementations can all interoperate. Release the protocol specs as RFCs, merge in feedback, and encourage independent implementations. Until there are two independent implementations, the protocol isn't worth anything.

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    I am TheRaven on Soylent News
    1. Re:It's the protocols, stupid! by InsertWittyNameHere · · Score: 4, Insightful

      sudo mod him up

      If we had a standardized protocol then everyone (Google, MS, Apple, MySpace, Facebook, random company, universities, you, me, etc etc) can integrate the service into existing products or create their own implementation.

      Click here to activate Diaspora on your (Google Me, Apple Ping, MSN/Live/Bing/whatever its called today) account. You won't even have to leave Facebook because if there is a threat of users leaving they will just integrate it.