At this point it seems more like a reminder that they exist. The project isn't in beta yet, and the alpha has been dragging on for longer than many had probably anticipated. In that time, G+ has arrived, gone through beta, and has fully launched.
I'm happy there is an "open" option and all but I'm sort of put off by their "message" it seems to be very sophomoric statements of "hey hey we're here, look at us, we did this first!" to which I can't help but reply "did what first? what the heck are you actually doing, no i don't want to spend my free time looking through your code or waiting for an invite"
Some advice on your messaging: if you're trying to solicit hackers to help out on the project, tell them why they should want in. Give them a reason to believe. "A brighter future for us all" is vague. It has no particular meaning.
If you want to convince someone, you've got to figure out what he really wants. Then you've got to speak to it. And that desire is probably a little more immediate and concrete than "a brighter future." It has to be something specific, something tangible, and something that your target audience believes he can actually achieve if he pitches in.
What are you offering your contributors? Is it experience? A great open-source community? (Are there any noteworthy members of said community? A little name drop never hurts, if done tactfully). And what, precisely, are you trying to build at this stage in the game?
Then, when you target would-be users, answer this: why is a distributed social networking service better than a walled garden? For the end user, convenience tends to trump everything. Barring a few vocal malcontents, most Facebook users don't really give all that much of a hoot that Facebook "controls" the entire site. Ditto G+. Explain to these users why they benefit from an open-source, distributed SNS. (And hopefully this benefit far exceeds any temporary inconvenience associated with figuring out how to use it).
Finally, you might want to split these blog posts / messages by target audience. Have developer-facing posts, and non-technical-user-facing posts. Try to speak to both audiences at once, and you're neither fish nor fowl.
Best of luck to you. I am certainly pulling for you, and for your concept in general.
Diaspora won't overtake Facebook or Google+, but it might convince them to hook into their distributed network. Especially since it's no real threat. If Diaspora can become to social networks what Trackback is to blogs, that will be enough of a success.
Agreed, though I'd like for that goal to be articulated. Vision statements like this one should have concrete visions as well as lofty goals (i.e., "building a brighter future.")
Tangent: are trackbacks in any way a success? Do you for example know anyone who uses them or pays attention to them? Are they useful to certain softwares?
I think they were used a bit back in blog's heyday but they're probably too complicated for most bloggers to use, and those who do tend to be spammers. So the analogy was perhaps bad. I want Diaspora to be the glue for the social internet, the way trackbacks are, albeit more elegantly.
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