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On Diaspora's Social Network, You Own Your Data

businessweek.com

41–50 of 91 posts

Re: On Diaspora's Social Network, You Own Your Data

#41
post #35

Does anyone else think that the name "Diaspora" is downright terrible for mass-marketing a new social network? It has a dark connotation for those who know what it means, it's a bizarre word for those who don't, and neither case is particularly "cool", at least to your average joe. And if Diaspora isn't trying to go Facebook-big, what's the point? All that said, I'm still rooting for their core mission. Social networ…

I have a bond with naturally occurring English words as product names. I don't think they should apologize, or feel bad for having a name that people don't know.

I would HOPE that people would learn from it, and end up with a slightly better vocabulary, and be thankful for it.

On the flipside, it's NOT a commonly used word, so SEO for it (at least for the name) should be drop dead easy. A search for Diaspora should contain either a wiki link to a disambiguation page, or an article about them. That's about as good as you can hope for, SEO wise, though I obviously have to concede that the name fails the obvious pronounceability test, but as more and more of our interactions are relegated to clicks, that's becoming less of an issue than it used to be.

Re: On Diaspora's Social Network, You Own Your Data

#42
post #7
post #3

How do they plan on monetizing their efforts?

Most social activity generates no revenue. It's tragic that we are moving towards a society which sees every relationship as mediated by economic utility.

And yet almost all businesses/organizations that facilitate human social activity extract some sort of profit: the postal service, telephone companies, ISPs, bars/pubs, and churches (for the cynic), to name a few.

Re: On Diaspora's Social Network, You Own Your Data

#44
post #37

Does anyone else find this style of headline odd? I've noticed it a lot lately; mostly in the NY Times.

Yes this is such a NY Times style headline - I don't know exactly how to classify them but they seem to always run headlines which fit this mold. I find them extremely odd.

Re: On Diaspora's Social Network, You Own Your Data

#45
post #34

I'm sure it has been discussed elsewhere, but does FB actually earn $5.11 per user? That's amazing to me - I rarely use the site, but even when I am on I don't recall ever clicking an ad. In fact, I don't know many people that have either.

TV makes ~$.20 per user-hour and no one ever clicks an ad.

Re: On Diaspora's Social Network, You Own Your Data

#46
post #5

In other news, Business Week is two years behind. Also, what's the deal with the fake-vintage effect on the pictures? Is it their lame corporate way of attempting to be "hip"?

our photographer (aimee) is actually a fashion photographer by trade and would refuse to use digital during the shoot.

give her some love for being awesome! http://www.aimeebrodeur.com

#tragicallyhip.

Re: On Diaspora's Social Network, You Own Your Data

#48
post #43

I don't get the fascination with Diaspora. StatusNet is distributed, open, easy to set up, established, and extensible, and already has a large number of users (e.g. on identi.ca). What does this bring to the table? Newness?

It's sad, but (relative) newness is a pretty big feature; it gets attention, and attention gets users.

The web has no attention span. You're either brand-new and hyped beyond realism, or ancient and boring.

Re: On Diaspora's Social Network, You Own Your Data

#49
post #29

I'm actually glad they are continuing on and fighting the stigma of the "best social network that never was". I have used Diaspora's site for a while and prefer it to Facebook and Google+. The problem is trying to maintain three separate social networks. Since most of the people I like to keep up with are on FB and G+, my use of Diaspora has slowed down over the past year or so.

What kind of people use G+? Only times I visit is when linked, and it's often some OSS-guru who has written something there but I dont ever use it, nor does anyone I know, not even remotely.

I have a a couple huge circles of tech and science people that are quite active on G+. It allows for more intelligent posts and conversations than twitter and that's how I primarily use it.
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