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In theory, the idea of an open-source, distributed Facebook alternative sounds nice.
I was given a chance to get an invite to a Disapora pod recently (for which, thank you!), and knowing they are still in alpha, I still took it as I was curious.
I remain curious. Now coupled with 'confused'. I think I'll try again when they get to beta, maybe. At least on the pod I was invited to, the only documentation I could find is the disclaimer of "we're still in alpha, it may be broke!" I have no clue how it works, the search appears to be amazingly dumb (given a first and last name, it found me people with that first name; either no one had that last name, or it ignored it, and either way that's SO not useful), and since it's in alpha I imagine not many people are there yet anyway. Or if they are, then the search is weirder than I think. It's weird enough: no button, just hit enter? On some pages that is very dangerous, I'm hesitant to do that, but when there's no button (and no label that it's a search box), you kinda just sort of take a deep breath and hit enter and hope it does what it might do. (UI presently: made of whitespace and fail.)
It's ... pods. Separate installations. Can you link to someone across pods? Can you search for people across pods? If you can't, it's verging on useless - distributed architectures don't work if they just mean everything is islands and you can't find anything. If you can, I can't tell how. But then again...see alpha. And no linked documentation.
If I had time, what I "should" do is go hunt up the main project and see whether, besides alpha code, they have some alpha documentation that this pod didn't bother to link to. If I dug them up, I could even give feedback on my experience. I can't find that on this pod either - the link in the upper right includes the word 'feedback' but the page that pops up doesn't tell you where to put it, unless they mean Facebook, which would be terminally ironic. There is a link to Twitter (feedback in 140 characters: not so much) as well as Facebook. And I could open a support ticket if I wanted to, but not just tell them and walk away, apparently.
Given that it's the holiday season and my life includes a toddler...I don't have the time for any of it anyway, not if it's not moderately intuitive easy. Which it's nowhere near, at least yet.
I'll probably try again at beta or release, but I don't think it's ready for use by any but the folks who are deeply involved in it, or want to be, yet.
That said, if anyone who IS (or isn't :) in the latter category wants to check it out at https://diasp.org/ - I do have invite codes. That piece actually looks straightforward and intuitive to me, so I can easily send them if anyone wants one. :)
I was given a chance to get an invite to a Disapora pod recently (for which, thank you!), and knowing they are still in alpha, I still took it as I was curious.
I remain curious. Now coupled with 'confused'. I think I'll try again when they get to beta, maybe. At least on the pod I was invited to, the only documentation I could find is the disclaimer of "we're still in alpha, it may be broke!" I have no clue how it works, the search appears to be amazingly dumb (given a first and last name, it found me people with that first name; either no one had that last name, or it ignored it, and either way that's SO not useful), and since it's in alpha I imagine not many people are there yet anyway. Or if they are, then the search is weirder than I think. It's weird enough: no button, just hit enter? On some pages that is very dangerous, I'm hesitant to do that, but when there's no button (and no label that it's a search box), you kinda just sort of take a deep breath and hit enter and hope it does what it might do. (UI presently: made of whitespace and fail.)
It's ... pods. Separate installations. Can you link to someone across pods? Can you search for people across pods? If you can't, it's verging on useless - distributed architectures don't work if they just mean everything is islands and you can't find anything. If you can, I can't tell how. But then again...see alpha. And no linked documentation.
If I had time, what I "should" do is go hunt up the main project and see whether, besides alpha code, they have some alpha documentation that this pod didn't bother to link to. If I dug them up, I could even give feedback on my experience. I can't find that on this pod either - the link in the upper right includes the word 'feedback' but the page that pops up doesn't tell you where to put it, unless they mean Facebook, which would be terminally ironic. There is a link to Twitter (feedback in 140 characters: not so much) as well as Facebook. And I could open a support ticket if I wanted to, but not just tell them and walk away, apparently.
Given that it's the holiday season and my life includes a toddler...I don't have the time for any of it anyway, not if it's not moderately intuitive easy. Which it's nowhere near, at least yet.
I'll probably try again at beta or release, but I don't think it's ready for use by any but the folks who are deeply involved in it, or want to be, yet.
That said, if anyone who IS (or isn't :) in the latter category wants to check it out at https://diasp.org/ - I do have invite codes. That piece actually looks straightforward and intuitive to me, so I can easily send them if anyone wants one. :)
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