It's like at my work when I proposed that we could get some benefit from an "interim solution" until we could finish up what we were planning. Of course people started (innocently, ignorantly) calling the original plan the "final solution". Always made me cringe.

Given the misspellings/mispronounciations/miscommunications already inherit in the name, I think they should re-brand as something like: Disápora ... (or some other spelling of a similar phonetic ilk)

* I say this because every time I've tried to describe it verbally, I always end up saying something like 'disapora' and making a hand-wavey gesture in a direction "away" from 'facebook'

You either work with uneducated simpletons, or closet nazis and crypto-fascists. There is just no way anybody with a modicum of culture would hear "final solution" and not cringe, much less use the phrase passively in everyday non-historic conversation.

> For a lot of people, their name’s strongest connotation is Jewish persecution.

Funny, I think of http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_diaspora

Funny, I think of New Orleans

Funny, I think of how I use social networking to talk to those I can't see, or I'm not around. The entire idea fits the term more than the term fits it. We are all seeking connectedness.

To me, as a Jew, “Diaspora” just means “outside of Israel”. Of course Jews live in so many different countries outside of Israel because of our history of being persecuted, but when I first heard of the “Diaspora project” I did not have an immediate reaction of “what an offensive name”.

Your mileage, of course, may vary.

I think a bigger problem might be that for the majority of people who use The Facebook, diaspora has absolutely no denotation. (And very little connotation).

Diaspora is at least an easy-grade SAT word.

Even for those of us who know the denotation, it gives absolutely no indicator as to what the product does. (It is instead a reference to how the product works... dispersed Facebook). From a marketing standpoint this is a problem.

Hopefully this will become 'the diaspora project', and they will come up with a new name for the actual results of it.

that's what I felt as well ... diaspora usually happens when a people are kicked out of their land to roam the earth among other people. Not very positive as far as connotations go. But hey, let's see what they come up with.

> For a lot of people

For New York Jews? You say it to me I think potato famines.

It's a fine, catchy name with some bite. Hopefully they don't trade it in for something dumb like folksr.

When I first mentioned Diaspora to my Greek friend, the first thing he said was, "is it a social network for Greek people?"