The official Diaspora blog has a big update with screenshots and video. They say they’ve implemented everything seen in the video except for the profile pictures, which is great, because it shows some complicated behavior (chat and status) using decentralized nodes.

You can also see that the user interface looks much less like a blog, as it did in the mock-up screenshot, and more like Facebook.

March 2010 pre-pre-alpha screenshot



July 2010 pre-alpha screenshot



Already, Diaspora’s offering is looking better from a UI standpoint than anything currently available from free software developers. I think it’s safe to say at this point that the grassroots investments were not wasted. However, the whole thing depends on people moving their friends to Diaspora when it comes out; and that’s not going to happen until September! I hope y’all can hold out until then.

A few months back we blogged about Diaspora, the new “anti facebook” Social Network that a group of NYU students were working on over the summer in the US. Well, summer is officially over and the newest kid on the social networking block is almost ready to launch.

Naming itself the “The privacy aware, personally controlled, do-it-all, open source social network” Diaspora sets to take on facebook and convert some of its 500 million plus members and of course most of those who wont join facebook because of security and privacy concerns.

Ironically the development team have a Facebook page which is infrequently updated although signs point to the public launch being sometime around the 15th September, just as two of the developers return from the burning man music festival.

When asked the other day if Id be signing up, I answered of course! When asked if I think people will leave Facebook for Diaspora, I think initially probably not.

That’s not to say that if Facebook drops the ball and Diaspora have something totally awesome up their sleeves that no one has seen before, that people wont try and maintain dual profiles. Time will tell but we are all certainly excited to see what these guys come up with on the 15th!