crowbyte is now part of the diaspora* network

A short announcement on my own account: as you might have recognized already with a look at the footer you can now find crowbyte at the diaspora network as well!

Entering the world of the decentralized distributed open source social networks

Diaspora and Friendica are two quite well known open source projects which aim at delivering open source alternatives to Facebook by offering a decentralized distributed open social network. They are both trying to address almost the same features by taking completely different approaches. I was really thinking about running a Diaspora Pod or Friendica shared host. But the registration of crowbyte at diasp.org shows that I abandoned that idea in the end - or at least put it to rest for the time being.

The reason for that is, that I might have convinced two or maybe even more - let it be a hand full - to use my Pod. In the end it is very likely that it had become one of those almost single user Pods that are eating up costs for an almost unused server. And as my regular web server's resources are limited I would definitely be in need for an additional server. So this is one of the main reasons I decided to register at one of the good going and reliable Pods which support connectors to Twitter and Facebook. You can have a look at which Pods have the best uptime and support which connectors at podupti.me.

Another very nice feature of diaspora is that you can import and export your user account. This means as soon as I decide to run a Pod on my own after all I can simply export my data from my current Pod, import it at my own Pod and delete my account on the former.

Phew... yet another social network?

Well, you might think that but in the end diaspora and using diaspora is about encouraging and promoting the use of open source alternatives which take care about your privacy, where you as the user have the control over your data and what you want to share with whom. Additionally you do not give away the rights on your intellectual or any other kind of property. You pictures belong to you as the rights for them should do as well - no matter where you share them.

Another nice thing is that you can download your pictures and export your data, as I mentioned earlier and import it all back to another Pod or do with it whatever you want. It's all completely up to you. And that's the beauty about diaspora and why I decided that I should do my part in promoting the use of diaspora in particular and open source alternatives which respect your privacy in general anyway!

crowbyte.org