Diaspora

Diaspora is a distributed social network. It is based on free and open-source software (GNU-AGPL-3.0). You can choose a pod where your data will be hosted (where you will log in), or you can host your own. You have no obligation to give personal information and can remain anonymous. There are no advertisements. It has private messaging and also "conversations" which can include more than two people. You can search and follow tags. You can also view a stream of posts limited to only certain "aspects" (family, friends, or a custom aspect you created).

History

By Nick Pinto:

"A few months after Moglen's speech, the group launched a Kickstarter campaign for a project they called Diaspora*. Diaspora* would be everything Moglen had called for: open-source, respectful of privacy, and controlled by users. Instead of routing all exchanges through a central clearinghouse, Diaspora* users would set up their own nodes, storing their information locally.

The team members quickly raised more than $200,000, plenty to fund a summer in San Francisco and to build the skeleton of their new social network. That fall, they released a "pre-alpha" version, soliciting feedback from other developers. There was plenty of criticism, but most of it was constructive. A year later, last November, the team released a redesigned version that patched the earlier security holes and included a host of new features, many familiar for users of Facebook and Twitter: hashtags, status updates, and "Like" buttons.

Just days later, Zhitomirskiy died suddenly, in what a source close to the company told CNNMoney was a suicide. The loss of Zhitomirskiy—often described as the most idealistic and privacy-conscious member of the group—was a devastating setback, but Diaspora* continues.

Early on, the team recognized that coding a distributed social network might actually be the easy part. It would be harder to persuade users to move from Facebook—the network where all their friends, (past, present, and future) already were—to their new, sparsely populated network.

Their solution was to make Diaspora* play well with others. Sign up for a Diaspora* account, and your posts can easily be imported into Tumblr, Twitter, and even Facebook. In the early stages of its use, Diaspora* can function as a social aggregator, bringing together feeds from various other platforms. The idea is that this lowers the barriers to joining the network, and as more of your friends join, you no longer need to bounce communications through Facebook. Instead, you can communicate directly, securely, and without running exchanges past the prying eyes of Zuckerberg and his business associates." (http://www.villagevoice.com/2012-02-15/news/the-facebook-killers/3/)

Protocols

Protocols used by Diaspora to create a de-centralised social network include the

1. Salmon Protocol, http://www.salmon-protocol.org/
2. OStatus, http://ostatus.org/
3. Web Finger, http://webfinger.org/
4. PubSubHubbub, http://code.google.com/p/pubsubhubbub/
5. AMQP
6. HTTP
7. HTTPS

More Information

1. Source, https://github.com/diaspora/diaspora/
2. Details about the project, https://wiki.diasporafoundation.org/Main_Page
3. kickstarter page, http://www.kickstarter.com/projects/196017994/diaspora-the-personally-controlled-do-it-all-distr
4. Wikipedia article, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Diaspora_(social_network)
5. One Social Web