Appleseed is a lot farther along, and has been releasing steadily this whole summer. It's years ahead of Diaspora, they've been putting out a new release every month, and they already have a bunch of nodes already running their software.<p><a href="http://opensource.appleseedproject.org" rel="nofollow">http://opensource.appleseedproject.org</a><p>I think by the time Sep 15th rolls around, Appleseed will be on it's fourth release this summer.
So, took some UI classes, ate some bagels, gave some talks, met some interesting people, off to Burning Man. All wonderful things but none of them actually say or show much about what they have got implemented and working.
I really hope their API will come soon; I think the best chance they have of user adoption will be based on the creativity of API developers bridging the gaps between Diaspora and other services. If users can communicate between Diaspora nodes and other social networks, at least on a basic level, they could see enough migration to make their efforts worthwhile.
I know most people always comment on how the Diaspora project is destined to fail, and they're probably right.<p>However, there's no denying how awesome it is that a few college kids can raise over $100,000 like this to build their project.<p>Even if the project fails like most people say, I imagine it will be a positive experience for the four guys that worked on it.
They don't seem to get open source. Open source is having code available so people can contribute and review, not simply dumping some files at a specified date.
Why is their logo an asterisk when it seems their whole idea is that they are the social network without a catch? The asterick at the end of their name instantly makes me want to scroll down to read the fine print.
It's sad that they didn't just tack onto an existing project like Pinax and add functionality to it to handle the federated system. There was no need to reinvent the wheel, the existing ones just needed a little truing.
One might argue that all those other OStatus network are way ahead, but I never read _their_ updates on HN, so Diaspora has at least a lot of buzz around it and thus the potential to get a user base faster than all the others.
Personally, I'd really like to see a way of giving people the ability to share eachothers posts on diaspora (with posters consent of course). Metrics for posts could then be measured and displayed, and a whole new golden age of blogging/microblogging/online-publishing could be born out of this.<p>Also, there's got to be a better way of connecting people of similar interests via groups than the current model.<p>Also also, please consider musicians in the melée!!<p>god speed diaspora. I for one will be joining asap.
I just clearly support you guys. impatient to read your code and share the good parole in my countries (Farnce-Chile-India).. Your tools, partners and tech choices rock !! Ruby, MongoDB; Github, Pivotal. They give a clear view on what you do and how you work. I am also impatient to see what is that wonderful bot and how do you guys will handle propagation of seeds. Let's work !!.
Great to hear that they have a solid team of advisors and that they are putting the user experience first. With open-source I am always a bit concerned that design and experience are secondary. Diaspora has a great story going on right now, I hope the product will continue that with the same spirit and capture people's imaginations.
Sadly I don't think this will take off. So many people rallied over Diaspora calling it the Facebook killer not understanding the true implications. Maybe I am wrong about this but wouldn't the people that want to use this have to download it and host it themselves?
I worry. The whole update reminded me of when I move out of an apartment and think I've got one more load to go at 9pm... Just a few lamps and the vacuum. Three loads and four hours later and I'm still almost done.