(http://smartblogs.com/socialmedia/2010/08/31/forget-about-the-next-big-thing-6-little-social-networks-to-watch/). One of the new upcoming sites he talks about is a new Social Media network called Diaspora (https://joindiaspora.com). Though still in its Alpha version, it has attracted a lot of attention especially for its privacy features.
Some of the key features in Diaspora include
Segmentation according to cohorts: It is called the choice function, so a certain updates, Photographs and Jokes, will be shared only with the particular set of people. Now this way you can distinguish between the Personal connections and those who you may know but not too well to share these jokes etc.
Total Ownership of your content: You would have total ownership and distribution rights over content like photographs. Now this is way different from other Social Media sites like facebook which owns the content that you put up.
Apart from that Diaspora intends to be more simple and hence user friendly.
Is this a challenger to facebook well the answer is currently NO. At 700 Million users facebook is a very large country and shows no signs of folding up thought there are signs of slowing down due to saturation.
But I keep different updates for facebook and for other sites like LinkedIn. One clear example is that i have close to 450 connections on facebook but close to 1500 on LinkedIn.
With Diaspora I would not have the need to be present on two separate sites and update them continuously.
But will this take off, that we will only know once I get the invite for the Beta version. Will keep all posted once I have it.
Can diaspora integrate content from other social sites? That would help cut down on the time taken to recreate new content on one's profile.
ReplyDeleteI am not sure about that but there are other sites like http://ping.fm/
ReplyDeletewhich can help you update all social media sites at one go. I think you have to update Diaspora by your self and currently there is no indication that it would take content from the existing profiles on social media.
Too many choices..me thinks the world will soon tire of the social media bandwagon. MySpace, Orkut..went into oblivion when facebook hit, linkedin is a different space altogether, so's flikr etc. Unless Diaspora's got something game-changing to offer (facebook does cover the privacy issues bit - to a very large extent) and if the only offering is rights over what you upload (will we be getting royalties :)) not sure I'd be interested. We usually share stuff which can be shared freely- forget the rights part - no great gain there!
ReplyDeleteHi Anonymous
ReplyDeleteI agree to a certain extent. While My Space has gone into oblivion, and so has Orkut atleast in the region outside Brazil, Facebook has thrown up certain privacy challenges. The key is that are you ready for a scenario where the choice of what is visible to people depends on which cohort you can group them under. I hope this is as exciting as it sounds but that would depend on how the Beta version looks like. I am waiting for that.