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Top-level
 @dansup > any other fedi project does this yet #diaspora is effectively helping newcomers populate the timeline on their first log-in. ;) "What are you into? Hashtags allow you to talk about and follow your interests. They're also a great way to find new people on diaspora*. Try following tags like #art, #movies, #gif, etc." This prompt is the first thing a newcomer sees. Those who don't ignore it have a chance to avoid the issue of an empty timeline. @grishka 9 comments
@grishka I disagree that a social network blooms only on Facebook / Whatsapp model. Many users on Twitter, Instagram, etc., enjoy finding strangers and new content by interests. A very large ammount of social networks is built on this concept. Many still use VK specifically for its communities that unite random people. Telegram became popular in part due to its chats/channels. I wish you luck with your idea, but also encourage you not to dismiss the importance of good UX connecting strangers ;)  lostinlight, I do have groups for that purpose. Yes, connecting strangers is important, but — as I said — secondary. Being able to find strangers with common interests isn't what locks people into Facebook/Instagram/Twitter/VK/whatever — it's the connections with people they know IRL. And thus, to liberate these people from these greedy creeps, we need to provide for that use case and make it as effortless as possible to switch. deadsuperhero, importing GDPR export archives! I'll research that at some point. I've read somewhere that Facebook helped people switch from MySpace by literally logging into their MySpace accounts and synchronizing stuff. As in, when they posted something on Facebook, it got automatically cross-posted to MySpace. @dansup @grishka Yes, diaspora federates via its own protocol only with 3 other networks: Friendica, Hubzilla and Socialhome, because it refuses to add ActivityPub support [still, I include diaspora into Fediverse, because many new ActivityPub projects are also able to connect without bugs only to 3-4 other AP networks, so diaspora in that sense is no big difference 😉] @lightone Fediverse originally referred to the OStatus-verse and then, as Mastodon dominated the Fediverse, the term smoothly switched its meaning to OStatus+ActivityPub. Now that ActivityPub plugin for GNU Social is working, I think it's fair to only consider AP-verse as the Fediverse. Referring to Diaspora as a part of the Fediverse is just misleading to new users. That's how I understand the way this term evolved. |
Gregory's Server
lostinlight, again — that's exactly the wrong thing. No one wants to follow random people. NO ONE. Most want to find people they already know. Finding someone with common interests is a very much secondary activity on social media.
Mastodon did have a thing where you connected your Twitter account and it matched your Twitter follows against its database of Twitter<->Mastodon connections. But this was a single point of failure: it ran on a single server, and it used a single app ID, that stopped working when Eugen deleted his Twitter account. They weren't able to get it working again.
Now, my idea is to avoid single points of failure at all costs, and most preferably extract contact lists out of centralized services without their consent — no way in hell they're giving one. So, if necessary, I'll have to resort to things like importing GDPR export archives, or even parsing their websites. APIs would work too, but only where API access doesn't require a manual pre-approval (for example VK).
lostinlight, again — that's exactly the wrong thing. No one wants to follow random people. NO ONE. Most want to find people they already know. Finding someone with common interests is a very much secondary activity on social media.
Mastodon did have a thing where you connected your Twitter account and it matched your Twitter follows against its database of Twitter<->Mastodon connections. But this was a single point of failure: it ran on a single server, and it used a single app ID, that stopped working...