
Diaspora 0.5 released - jaywink
https://blog.diasporafoundation.org/16-diaspora-version-0-5-0-0-released
======
slg
I imagine other people are like me and are curious about the actual usage
numbers for Diaspora, so I will share the results of my 30 seconds of research
on Google. Although I have no idea how accurate these numbers are as the
decentralized design of Diaspora makes it hard to capture everything.

Rough estimates look to be about 1.2 million accounts with 81,550 active in
the last 6 months and 20,207 active in the last month. There have been a
little under 4 million total posts. [1] For sake of comparison, it takes
Twitter roughly 10 minutes to accumulate that many Tweets.

[1] - [http://pods.jasonrobinson.me/](http://pods.jasonrobinson.me/)

~~~
unicornporn
I'm not sure size is always an advantage when it comes to communities. There's
always a certain vibe to places with limited users that I'm really hooked too.
Generally, I think we should give up the idea of gathering everyone at a
single point/protocol (federated or not). People will always chose different
ways to communicate. But the ones that really matters will, eventually, be
were you are.

~~~
glesica
I agree. I think the interesting next step would be to ask if there are any
communities that have adopted Diaspora heavily. Anecdotes from anyone whose
social group uses it regularly would also be interesting.

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davidy123
I think their big ongoing mistake is not focusing on a protocol. As well if
they'd focused on Javascript we might have a browser based peer to peer system
by now

~~~
junto
Further to this, I think Diaspora have the wrong use case.

People want _personal clouds_ , not community pods. All they've done is swap
out my data from Facebook (who I don't trust) to some random person on the
internet who hosts a pod (who I don't trust either).

They want to _self host_ their own little social networks, where they can
_privately share_ posts, photos and chat with _friends and family_.

They want to choose a hosting provider with a point and click install (like
Wordpress) and use a backend store in the cloud like AWS S3, Rackspace Cloud
or Google to store their data encrypted.

Then they can start straight away uploading photos and inviting friends.

Ideally each personal cloud would have some kind of syndication system, so you
could share content with the personal clouds of friends, you know, like ATOM
or RSS! I'm actually not kidding.

This is what I'm looking for. I haven't found it yet.

~~~
cmelbye
People want this? How many people?

~~~
junto
That's a very valid question. I genuinely encourage people to answer your
question.

~~~
egypturnash
I'm a nerd and I don't want this. I can't imagine anyone who doesn't think
fiddling with computers for its own sake is fun wanting this.

Maybe, _maybe_ I might want it if it came in the form of a phone/web/desktop*
app that shared my data around. Possibly to an always-on, minimal-
configuration-required box __that I could plug into a wall socket and forget
about.

* phone is a must, plus one of either web or desktop - also you'd need it to be available on iOS and Android, so that's at least three versions

 __tell it about my wifi network, give it a name and password, and it Just
Works

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luisZavaleta
I thought Diaspora was dead.

~~~
erikpukinskis
Open source software doesn't die until the last user stops using it. That's
the point. If it were proprietary it _would_ be dead.

~~~
JulianMorrison
It does, however, become a Lovecraftian relic, unchanging, undying, until the
stars come right or the users return.

~~~
shubb
Oh! So that's why OpenBSD has that mutant fish logo!

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tremendo
I for one I'm glad to re-discover this and although 0.5 does not sound like a
"major version" as the post says, I am inclined to give it a try.

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technofiend
Cool in concept, flawed in execution in that the general public is unaware of
the network or its benefits.

It reminds me of us trying to get friends and family to use pgp with their
email 25 years ago. They just didn't see the value prop.

From what I've read online the newest generations of computer users _do_ see
the value for ephemeral networks and prefer Snapchat, WhatsApp, line, yikyak,
etc to FaceBook just to avoid a record of everything they do online.

I'm not sure Diaspora is really on their radar with so many other options in
that space. Provably need a compelling android and iOS app to really compete
there.

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sushirain
Why does a potential user have to even know about "pods"? Or worse: to "choose
a pod". Just choose one for me. Is diaspora for techies, or for people who
care about privacy?

~~~
shmerl
Because choosing a pod involves the question of trust. When you choose a
doctor, do you say "choose one for me"? Or you do your research first? I guess
some might do the former without second thought, but it's not a smart thing to
do.

Normally people should care about privacy. Surprise.

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aikah
People will crucify me for saying this but had they choose PHP instead of
Rails, these folks would have had a better luck. I don't know any really
popular web/CMS/project that is not written in PHP. Well I know some but they
all are commercial Java CMSs. The only exception I know is a CRM/ERP built
with Python.

Edit: i'm obviously talking about open source plateform.

~~~
nightpool
??? I think there are a lot of really popular applications that aren't written
in PHP. In fact, excluding Facebook and Mediawiki, I can't think of anything I
would classify as "popular" that is written in PHP. (Not sure whether to count
PHPBB or not, seeing as although none of the sites hosted on it get a ton of
traffic, cumulatively it must be one of the most popular pieces of web
software ever)

Rails, specifically has Github, Twitter, Basecamp, and Discourse, just off the
top of my head.

~~~
gboone42
WordPress is PHP, and licensed GPL, too. Last I heard roughly 20% of the web
was running it.

~~~
bdcravens
That's interesting, because Matt Mullenweg, one of Wordpress's cofounders and
original author, said that if he rewrote Wordpress today, he'd choose Go:

[https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1jg781/i_am_matt_mull...](https://www.reddit.com/r/IAmA/comments/1jg781/i_am_matt_mullenweg_cofounder_of_wordpress_18_of/cbed1jk)

~~~
kijin
WordPress written in Go might be okay for the hosted version at WordPress.com,
but it would have a lot of difficulty achieving the kind of market share that
the self-hosted PHP version enjoys. I can't imagine Dreamhost et al. being
happy with people recompiling WordPress Go on their platforms all the time.

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rtz12
Interesting to see that Dispora is still alive.

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reinhardt
What's with the asterisk in the name?

~~~
chestervonwinch
> The word “diaspora” refers to the dispersal of seeds (or people) over a wide
> area. That’s why our motif is the dandelion, and the asterisk in our name
> represents a fluffy dandelion seed. We refer to individual accounts on
> diaspora* as “seeds,” and the servers in which those accounts are collected
> as “pods.” You’ll get used to it soon!

[https://diasporafoundation.org/getting_started/sign_up](https://diasporafoundation.org/getting_started/sign_up)

~~~
anigbrowl
This sort of in-group nerdiness is a barrier to adoption. Nowhere is this
explained on the
[https://diasporafoundation.org/](https://diasporafoundation.org/) landing
page, for example. So the mildly curious end up looking for the footnote
instead of reading the text closely, can't find it, get frustrated, and leave.

Same thing with 'And show your love for other people’s work by ♥ing it.' By
hearting it? by loving it? This sort of thing is not compatible with spreading
by word of mouth.

Likewise, the landing page urges visitros to 'choose a pod!' \- yet the
concepts of seeds and pods aren't articulated up front - your one-sentence
explanation of seeds and pods above should be the first or second sentence on
the landing page.

To be honest, I'm not sure how reliable that metaphor is, as people may not
care to be referred to as 'seeds' which sounds like some sort of cult
terminology...but it's no worse than routers and nodes in Tor or seeders and
leechers in torrent networks so that's probably not a big deal.

Also, why are there no screenshots on your landing page? I had to click around
for 5 minutes before I found a picture of what the software looks like. The
landing page is full of reasons about _why_ you might want to use it, but does
a terrible job of explaining _what it 's for_. You can't assume that everyone
is going to know that, and even for people who do know, there's no visual
representation of it being a Thing That Is Fun To Use.

~~~
shmerl
What's a + in Google+? The name is a name. If you want an explanation, you can
dig into it, but it's not a barrier for adoption.

~~~
anigbrowl
A plus, as in plus,google.com. As Facebook did with 'Like' they made very sure
to bind an easily memorable name to the icon.

I think it's a huge barrier to adoption. If people don't know how to _say_
'Diaspora* ' then they won't say it, and so nobody overhears it, nobody talks
about it in the media and so on. Just because you're on the internet doesn't
mean that people have stopped talking to each other in person. I _heard_ about
Google from 3 or 4 people before I went to Google.com back in 1997 or whenever
that was. And so on.

And again, diaspora* _don 't supply_ any explanation for their orthography on
their landing page. How are people supposed to know it's actually part of the
name if htey haven't encountered it before? Communities like HN aren't a good
proxy for the internet as a whole, you can launch something here but you need
to make it accessible to a general audience if you want mass adoption.

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einie
Diaspora needs a plugin sy stem to enable distribution and sharing of content
other than posts and pictures, Facebook had farmville, what could similar apps
do for diaspora?

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MrBra
The fact alone that this project is still alive and growing makes me happy. If
you never did anything yourself in this direction, well, IMO you should be
too.

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JDShu
As an aside, what happened to makr.io? The URL seems to go to something
completely different.

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mikesena
Wow this is still a thing?

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rdxm
if a tree falls in the forest.....

