Originally posted at www.blenzseymour.com at Sun, 10/02/2011 – 21:09
Finally.
After what seems like years, I got my invite to sign up at Diaspora. The coolest thing to me is that you probably don’t even know what it is yet. Don’t worry – people like me will spread the news quick. In a few words, it’s a dumbed down version of Facebook, Twitter and Google + (dumbed down is actually a good thing, by the way, if you didn’t know) and, get this –
YOU OWN YOUR OWN CONTENT! *
*if you want to set it up that way
Did you catch what I just wrote? This is the thing so many people have been waiting for. Why did I kill my Facebook account a year or so ago? Because I just didn’t like the way Facebook was starting to own our social lives. Like everyone else, I don’t mind actually posting about my life and seeing what everyone is up to, but I started to think about the trail this kind of stuff leaves. Then, I went to delete my account to find out that… it didn’t really seem to delete. In fact, I bet if I went there today and just tried to enter my old username and password that it would spring back to the condition before I ‘deleted’ my account. I haven’t tried that though, so I might be wrong. Point is this: If I start posting personal things I want to, as much as possible, be sure that I can erase that content forever and not leave some kind of ‘social trail’ behind me.
Diaspora is awesome. If I wanted to, I could set up a computer just for my family and install ‘my own social media website’ just for us. I could post photos of my daughter, my wife, even a picture of my gross farmer’s tan… and no one in the public would ever know (unless a hacker hacks in but that’s always a risk). It’s just… perfect. But, you don’t have to be that exclusive. You can set it up just like Google + (I kind of wonder if Google actually stole this concept from Diaspora…) with the ‘circles’ concept except they are called ‘aspects’ in Diaspora. You can stay pretty open about hooking up with people, and then just maintain your privacy via your ‘aspects’ and who you share your content with.
So, yeah. Remember when Facebook was pretty simple and didn’t have farm animals harassing you? It’s like that.
I know this isn’t a very cohesive blog but I just wanted to bang out a shout-out for the crew at Diaspora who has finally done something worth getting excited about. I’m already working with some local folk to set up our own pod. Here are some quick ideas I’ve already thought of where Diaspora might be useful:
1. A private way to network employees (large enterprises with high security)
2. Political party members (they want to discuss things totally off the public radar, I’m sure)
3. Family pod: a pod just for the family that will never host any other users other than actual family members so you can share extremely private information if need be without risk of content ending up in the wrong hands
etc
4. Education: teachers and students… somehow?
I mean check out their dumb-simple homepage:
I love these guys.
If you want to join, you could ‘try’ to get an account here by filling out a request (it’s still Alpha release):
…Or, you could beg me to send you an invite by following us on twitter @seymourblenz and I might find it in my heart.
See you in there…if you’re lucky
Oh yeah! One last thing: It works well.
