Diaspora/Website

Many networks make money by analysing your interactions and using this to advertise things to you. diaspora* doesn’t use your data for any purpose other than allowing you to connect and share with others. Only the admins of pods you interact with can access your data, and you can choose which pods you interact with.

We’ve got a large community ready to help you get started. We suggest you check out our %{get_started_guide_link}, talk to us on our %{discourse_link} and come and meet us in the %{irc_link}.

The diaspora* planet

Discussion & support

Instead of everyone’s data being held on huge central servers owned by a large organization, diaspora* exists on independently run servers (“pods”) all over the world. You choose which pod to register with, and you can then connect seamlessly with the diaspora* community worldwide.

You can be whoever you want to be in diaspora*. Unlike some networks, you don’t have to use your real identity. You can interact with people in whatever way you choose. The only limit is your imagination. diaspora* is also Free Software, giving you liberty over how you use it.

In diaspora* you own your data. You don’t sign over rights to a corporation or other interest who could use it. In addition, you choose who sees what you share, using Aspects. With diaspora*, your friends, your habits, and your content is your business ... not ours!

Use diaspora* as your home base to post to your profiles on other major social services. This way your friends will still be able to keep in touch with what you’re up to, even if they’re not yet on diaspora*. diaspora* currently supports cross-posting to your Twitter, Tumblr, and WordPress accounts, with more to come.

Unlike most social networking sites, which have a central hub of computers which store everyone’s data, we can’t give you one specific link and say: “Sign up here.” diaspora* is different from those networks in that it is <em>decentralized</em>, with many different points of access. Before getting started, you’ll have to decide which of these points, or nodes, you want to use to access the diaspora* network. We call these nodes “pods.”

The word “<strong>diaspora</strong>” refers to the dispersal of seeds (or people) over a wide area. That’s why our motif is the dandelion, and the asterisk in our name represents a fluffy dandelion seed. We refer to individual accounts on diaspora* as “<strong>seeds</strong>,” and the servers in which those accounts are collected as “<strong>pods</strong>.” You’ll get used to it soon!

You might have received an invitation to join diaspora* from someone you know. If so, this contains a link to the diaspora* pod on which the person who invited you is registered. If you want to join to the same pod as them, you can simply follow the link in the mail. However, you don’t have to be on the same pod as your friend to communicate with them. You can choose any pod you want as your home and talk to people throughout diaspora*.

You will always sign in to diaspora* on the same pod with which you first registered. From your pod you can connect to the whole network and your experience of diaspora* should be more or less the same no matter which pod you are connecting from. You will not be able to sign in to another pod, but there is no need for you to do this anyway.

During the registration process your seed will probably be connected automatically to one other seed. This will usually be our %{dhq_link} seed, but it may be a seed run by your pod’s admin. This is so we can keep you up to date with important announcements about diaspora*. If, however, you prefer not to follow this seed, you can easily remove it from your contacts list. We’ll cover how to do this in %{part_link}.

Add a few words about yourself. It might be things that interest you – perhaps music, activism – and perhaps the town you live in. These will be converted into <span class="click">#tags</span>, which help you find content and help other people to discover you. We’ll explain more about #tags later in this tutorial.

Most of the profile information fields are self-explanatory. NSFW stands for “not safe for work.” We’ll cover this in more detail in %{part_link}, so don’t worry about it now.

If you want to meet and be welcomed by the diaspora* community and are feeling confident enough, make a <strong>public</strong> post now to introduce yourself and include the <span class="click">#newhere</span> tag. Making public posts containing tags is a great way to make new friends on diaspora*. If you’re not sure about doing this now, don’t worry – we’ll take you through your first post step by step in %{part_link}.

In the sidebar you’ll see links to the different content views available in diaspora*: <span class="click">Stream</span>, <span class="click">My activity</span>, <span class="click">@Mentions</span>, <span class="click">My aspects</span>, <span class="click">#Followed tags</span> and <span class="click">Public activity</span>. We’ll explain these next. There are also some links to help you invite your friends, welcome new users, find help, connect to external services such as Twitter, Tumblr, and Wordpress (if available on your pod), post to diaspora* from the rest of the web (the diaspora* “bookmarklet”) and on some pods, contact information for the pod’s administrator and a button to donate to the costs of keeping your pod running.

The main column contains the content stream with a “publisher” box at the top. This is where the magic happens! We’ll cover using the publisher in %{part_link}.

My activity

Your “My activity” stream shows any posts which you have either liked or commented on. This is a useful way of catching up on any interactions you’ve been having in diaspora*. Posts in this stream are ordered according to the latest activity (comment or like) on each post.