This weekend I received an invitation through Facebook to join Diaspora. I had tried to join Diaspora last year when I learned about their Kickstarter success while writing my book on crowdsourcing, but I couldn't get in. So of course I was curious and went immediately to sign up.
And then I was puzzled. Diaspora looked just like...Google+. Or did Google+ look just like Diaspora?
The stream interface looks like the same layout down to the black bar across the top and the profile image on the left, contacts upper right. It's essentially the same site.
While not as feature rich as Google+ for obvious resource limitation reasons, the very functionality and implementation of Diaspora's "Aspects are Circles. Sparks on Google+ are Tags on Diaspora.
One thing that is better about Diaspora is definitely their integration with Twitter, Facebook, and Tumblr which clearly Google+ doesn't want to do (and probably feels it doesn't have to). What is better about Google+ is that they have additional features like Hangouts (although I'm still on the fence about Huddles). And also the stream feature on Google+ is much more robust, pulling in images from sites based on links and the ability to add more than just a photo.
And Google+ has MILLIONS of members already. Diaspora feels very tiny and empty. Or is that intimate?
From a chicken/egg standpoint, based on my understanding of the timing, I think the guys at Diaspora created this first and the folks at Google+ copied it. Hey, I'm just guessing here. If I were Google, I'd just buy up the Diaspora folks right away. There really isn't room for both, and anything but Google at this point is going to get crushed.
What are your thoughts about Diaspora versus Google+?
The key difference between the two is that Diaspora is decentralized and anyone can install a "pod" on their server, thus bypassing the need for any centralized service / company.
Posted by: Wade Aaron Inganamort | September 11, 2011 at 10:53 AM