The diaspora* brand is kind of awesome. The meaning of diaspora is apt, the choice of a word like that is both aggressive and erudite (a perfect tone for the current vibe against facebook and for attracting hackers in general), and it has the word "spore" in the sound, a fact that they are capitalizing on with all of the dandelion puff imagery, imagery which seems pure and simple and innocent (again, well-suited as a contrast to fb). Also the asterisk makes for a nice little logo in and of itself because it somewhat resembles a dandelion seed and it also happens to be a nice little visual representation of a network and it makes for a great visual identity element. They're doing some smart things with it already.
In short, I think you could spend several thousand dollars on branding and do worse, and while branding isn't their biggest obstacle, I think it's nice to see that they've done so well on that much at least so far.
