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Re:Diaspora: An Overdue Update by viraptor on Thursday August 26, 2010 @07:50PM (#1637555)
I think you lost the typical user at "whoever wants to download the source". Facebook users don't want to do that. They also don't understand "download" or "source" in many cases. They can click the blue icon in the "internet window".

(yeah - I know that's not as true nowadays as it was at the beginning of y2k, but I'm trying to make a point here...)

Re:Diaspora: An Overdue Update by thwarted on Thursday August 26, 2010 @08:02PM (#1637587)
Sounds like the perfect opportunity to provide a hosted service.

I've always thought the distributed social site concept had room for both those people who want to run things themselves and for service providers. Kind of like wordpress.

Re:Diaspora: An Overdue Update by djacobs on Thursday August 26, 2010 @09:39PM (#1637768)
Yes I agree. I, for one, plan to offer to host some of my good friends on my own VPS, along with my instance. (Diaspora, not AppleSeed.)
Re:Diaspora: An Overdue Update by jlgbecom on Thursday August 26, 2010 @11:08PM (#1637901)
I'd be interested to hear why you're more interested in hosting Diaspora instead of Appleseed?
Re:Diaspora: An Overdue Update by Joeboy on Friday August 27, 2010 @03:16AM (#1638205)
My straightforward answer: because a bunch of my Facebook friends seem to be looking forward to moving to Diaspora and I doubt any of them has heard of Appleseed.

It's possible that in a couple of months Diaspora will look a lot less like a Great White Hope. We will see.

Re:Diaspora: An Overdue Update by djacobs on Saturday August 28, 2010 @11:03PM (#1643003)
When I said "Diaspora, not Appleseed", that was meant as clarification of intent and not as a refusal to host Appleseed instances.

That said, I'll only use Diaspora for myself, but that's based on personal preference.

I know Ruby like the back of my hand and am comfortable with Rails. Also, my site's built in Rails, so Diaspora will probably integrate nicely.

Re:Diaspora: An Overdue Update by igravious on Friday August 27, 2010 @05:13AM (#1638333)
If these things are meant to be federated and open shouldn't they interop?
Re:Diaspora: An Overdue Update by jlgbecom on Thursday August 26, 2010 @08:24PM (#1637635)
Yeah, it's federated server software. It's meant to be run by people who provide a hosted environment for users.

In other words, it's software for anyone who wants to run their own facebook-like site. Except that all the sites running it connect to each other.

Once it's out of beta, most users will just go to a sign up page of any number of nodes out there (I think there's like 50 out there already? I'm not sure)

Re:Diaspora: An Overdue Update by WorkerBee on Friday August 27, 2010 @06:30AM (#1638432)
I think you lost the typical user at "whoever wants to download the source". Facebook users don't want to do that

Typical facebook users are not early adopters. None of these projects are even close to targeting typical facebook users yet.