I don't think the criticism was for prettiness, but just for aping existing social network look, feel and functionality. Which the FAQ says up-front is one of

I don't think the criticism was for prettiness, but just for aping existing social network look, feel and functionality. Which the FAQ says up-front is one of their aims: By default, we think it'll ship with a plugin to offer functionality that looks like the current popular social network sites, but plugins for other free software applications are expected.[1] For my 2c, Diaspora looks even more like Facebook in most of the UI design details. I actually don't know if that's going to be an important factor in determining if either platform becomes popular, though. Creating a decentralised social networking service will be difficult. Doing it while also reinventing social networking's user experience is an order of magnitude more difficult, although if they succeed then that's a compelling reason for people to migrate. [1] http://www.gnu.org/software/social/faq.html http://www.gnu.org/software/social/faq.html