DIASPORA-The Social Network

Concept

Diaspora is intended to address privacy concerns related to centralized social networks by allowing users set up their own server (or "pod") to host content; pods can then interact to share status updates, photographs, and other social data. It allows its users to host their data with a traditional web host, a cloud-based host, an ISP, or a friend. The framework, which is being built on Ruby on Rails, is free software and can be experimented with by external developers.
A key part of the Diaspora software design concept is that it should act as a "social aggregator", allowing posts to be easily imported from Facebook, Tumblr and Twitter. As Village Voice writer Nick Pinto explained, "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.

Development

Ilya Zhitomirskiy and Daniel Grippi (2011)

After the project raised over $200,000 in funding via the Kickstarter website by June 1, 2010, the group began working on the software. A developer preview with a number of security holes was released on September 15, 2010. On November 23, a redesigned website was published in preparation for the alpha release, with the old site still available as a blog section. The early security holes were fixed with the alpha release.
After its foundation is completed, Diaspora's developers intend to concentrate on creating a "battery of add-on modules" in order to "facilitate any type of communication," and plan to offer a paid hosting service for Diaspora seeds.
Development was shifted to free office space provided by Pivotal Labs in San Francisco, California. The software’s alpha version was released in September 2010. The early alpha version contained many bugs and security flaws, but feedback on the free software led to quick improvements.
The software's beta release was originally scheduled for November 2011, but was postponed due to the need to add new design features and also Zhitomirskiy’s death.
In February 2012, the developers indicated that they had completed work on the software back-end to improve both pod up-time and website response time. The next phase of work involved changes to the user interface and its associated terminology to reflect the way users are actually interacting, as the software moves towards beta status, anticipated for later on in 2012.
By May 2012, development was underway to allow a high degree of customization of user posts, permitting users to post different media, such as text, photos and video with a high degree of personalization and individual expression. The developers felt that allowing individual creativity in posts will differentiate the Diaspora platform from competitors.
In June 2012, the development team was scheduled to move to Mountain View, California as part of work with startup accelerator Y Combinator.
In August 2012, the founders of Diaspora announced they will let the community take over governance of the project, while they themselves, while still key, will take a lesser role.
In October 2012, the project made its first community release at 0.0.1.0, in accordance with the semantic versioning scheme, dropping all references to the Alpha/Beta branding it had previously used. Additionally, efforts are underway to package Diaspora for Linux distributions and other systems.