What can Diaspora learn from Google+?

[kallistixf]

At last year's Blue Hat conference, I gave a short talk on What Diaspora* can learn from Microsoft. Now, I'd like to do the same kind of analysis with Google+.

Ten weeks into the G+ experiment, what are the key learnings for a privacy-friendly distributed social network. Here's a few early thoughts.

• Diaspora's on the right track. Google+'s "circle" concept and page layout look like they're based on Diaspora's work -- and imitation is the sincerest form of flatter.


• Diaspora's current functionally + longer posts + easy link sharing + video = enough to get people excited


• The estimated 40% of people online who prefer "screen names" or pseudonyms are a really good target audience right now. Geek Feminism's excellent list of Who Is Harmed By a "Real Names" policy could be the basis of a great go-to-market plan for Diaspora


• Gender is a text field, but corporations run by cis guys still don't see it that way

Your thoughts welcome, either about these ideas or new ones!
jon

Comments

[hrafn]

Something I think Diaspora is missing is the ability to block and/or ignore other users, so that you can't see anything they write, anywhere, and they can't see anything you write, anywhere. Leaving people out of Aspect lists probably won't be enough for every occasion.

I actually don't know if G+ has got this nailed (yet, or plans to), but I think Facebook has.

[syntheid]

The thing I miss is what's on Dreamwidth/Livejournal and not really anywhere else? Filtering the reading list. I don't want to see macros and photography when I hit my default wall page, usually. I don't care as much about actually blocking anyone so much as I want to be able to control my feed and read what I want when I want.

[shiyiya]

So much cosign.

[libskrat]

G+ didn't during the brief time I used it. If you blocked somebody, you wouldn't see their posts, nor they yours, but you WOULD see their comments on other people's posts, and contrariwise.

Friendfeed got this right. Pity it's a slowly-dying service, because it got hiding right too (per syntheid's comment below).

[madelienegrey]

Do you mean by tag or keyword, or by user? Because you can view aspects in Diaspora much like reading filters in LJ/DW - I've set up a "SFW" aspect, for instance, that I use to include everybody but users that post NSFW content, and that's the aspect I view at the office. :)

[syntheid]

I mean being able to filter my default view by user and/or tag and keyword, so that when I log in, it's already set to filter out say... images/people who typically post only images, and if I want to look at those, I can go to the aspect.

Excellent suggestion!

[kallistixf]

And no, G+ got this wrong. What they call "Block" is actually more like "mute".

[kallistixf]

Great suggestion, thanks very much!