The Diaspora guys have missed the problem completely: the issues are not technical ones - the major problems here have been solved. The issue is UX: Nobody - a

The Diaspora guys have missed the problem completely: the issues are not technical ones - the major problems here have been solved. The issue is UX: Nobody - and certainly not Facebook - has come up with an effective interface that allows us to manage our interactions online with the fidelity that we want. And I doubt that these four kids are going to come up with a spell-binding piece of design that does this. They seem to be Ruby programmers, and certainly not designers - graphical, UX or otherwise if one is to judge by their website. Far deeper analysis of the problem is needed that the reactionary "Facebook are arseholes, they're acting like a big corporation". The details of how we create multiple online publics[1] for ourselves, how we relate to them, and understand them is key to building any sort of infrastructure to manage those publics. The Diaspora guys seem to be treating this as purely a technical problem, when it most certainly is not. [1] It's the other side of the coin to having multiple online identities, but to me, makes a bit more sense as a conceptual model for what we're dealing with.