Diaspora, the privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all, open source social network (project) has now released it’s source code, as expected. HURRAY!!!!!!
Read more at Diaspora Blog.
I was able to register to one of the installations people have made today, and this is what it looks like. There’s actually not very much to see, that’s why there’s only three screenshots. You can add friends but you can’t see their statuses unless you send them the URL of the status. Can’t add photos or anything else.
UPDATE: Adding photos works, the instance I first tried was a somewhat broken installation.
So this is the first developer release! Can’t wait for alpha, beta & stable releases!
If you want to try, go to one of the official test instances listed at FAQ. Remember that they are wiped every now and then without warning!!
-
- Statuses & comments
-
- Manage tab
-
- Profile settings
-
- Adding new friend
-
- Error message…
-
- Photo upload view
-
- Photo viewer
-
- Status showing uploaded photo
No related posts.
Looks so great, now we will have wait the first stable version. Layout seems simple and elegant so far, so good.
I don’t get all this buzz. If setting it up is any harder than typing a website address in your browser, the casual user just isn’t going to bother, and it’s going to remain a “geeky thing” like the GPG web of trust.
In the end, I think the Facebook privacy scandals miss the point, and deal with the symptom rather than the disease. Social Media(R)(tm) are designed for people who don’t care about privacy — because if you cared about your privacy, you wouldn’t spend your day documenting your life in minute detail 140-character messages. Pitching privacy controls to Facebook’s target audience is like trying to sell clothes to nudists. If you don’t want your private information to be public knowledge, there’s only one real solution: don’t post it on the Internet.
There are public demo servers available:
http://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/wiki/Frequently-Asked-Questions
Can’t add photos? What is that supposed to mean? Seemed to work fine for me…
@lucidfox:Pitching privacy controls to Facebook’s target audience is like trying to sell clothes to nudists. If you don’t want your private information to be public knowledge, there’s only one real solution: don’t post it on the Internet.
That is assuming that everyone is aware of the privacy issues, but truth is not everyone is/was.
This thing needs 350 MB (!!) of ruby gems and it is just a very basic version yet.
How exactly do they expect this thing will spread if only a minority of people can run a seed? This is clearly not the solution of giving the users back control over their social network data. The only things it means is the user now has more choice of providers over which they have the same sort of control than over facebook: None.
@Toni: yes, waiting for the stable releases to come out ;)
@lucidfox: Thanks for your opinion although I disagree.. There are people who value privacy and I hope they will find Diaspora.
@Flimm: THANKS!!!
@Anders: I tried another instance and there the photos worked, I’ll add new screenshots soon..
@Marcus: I don’t know whats inside that 350MB, maybe already lots of libraries that will be used also later: I don’t expect the space requirement to go up linearly with the features. But we’ll see. And anyway most of the people will NOT run their own seeds but use a hosted service somewhere – check Flimm’s list..
@Risto
That is exactly the point. A part of the Diaspora slogan is “personally controlled”.
In my opinion, if you wanted to develop a software like this for personal control, you have clearly missed that goal with high requirement (technical and knowledge) like Diaspora does, because you cannot expect an average Joe to match those. The 350MB is not that bad because of the space they take, but because they are a measure of how complex the software requirements are.
@Marcus: As said, my guess is that most of the space is taken by some libraries from other projects.
Someone at #diaspora IRC channel confirmed that most of the space is taken by some libraries.
Here’s one view on Diaspora: http://blogs.computerworld.com/16974/diaspora_its_no_facebook_yet?source=rss_vnichols
I also assume that when the code is “ready”, the size will be reduced greatly and as everone knows this is now the developer version and the very first. So be patient and remember that if your unhappy you can use your programming skills to help the project. That’s the purpose of open source, right ?
yes, that is the purpose of open source. As well there are other projects being developed so many that I wonder how it is that only Diaspora is getting any mainstream attention. What is true is that the installation requirements is extreme, for someone who runs their own server, no sweat, but it cannot run as a “wordpress” type app because that is just not how this is designed. It will need it’s own IP it seems because it will need to specifically block certain ports (443, but maybe that’s not a feature so will be fixed).
So yeah, if you have alot of time (even though you don’t have 200 000$) why not go and dev for diaspora.. Or you can try out (and dev) on GNU-Scoial.
What I do hope (as some are working on both it seems) is that the result of all this be a spec of some sort that would allow anyone to code their own “client/node”.
I’m supporting this, but not so much because I want more privacy — moreso because I want more control. It doesn’t sit right that Facebook sells my information to advertisers. Honestly, I’d rather have it out there to anyone if it’s going to be out there at all — whether it’s someone looking into starting a new business, or a students doing research for a thesis. Or yes, a marketer trying to figure out how to sell me something.
I’m firmly for openness (for those who want it), and it’s a package deal I suppose. Either I’m open with everyone I don’t know or I’m open with no one I don’t know (ie. not on the internet :)
So diaspora has now started rolling out alpha invites – but there are lots of security concerns.. See http://mashable.com/2010/09/16/diaspora-source/#4192Diaspora-Developer-Opinions
So the question is – how well are they actually doing… Is the project ‘open’.. does the limited invitation system work for Diaspora..
Pingback: Diaspora private alpha review round-up | EtonDigital