Trying out #diaspora and I'm wondering what the people in the #ActivityPub corner of the #fediverse currently think of it.
Personally I'm struggling to see what niche it would fill for me. The current features don't seem all that different from #mastodon and if I wanted something less birdsite-like wouldn't #friendica be the obvious choice since it federates with both? What am I missing?
@b6hydra you are missing the absolute state of software industry. All you need is to succeed is marketing, nothing is fit for any purpose, other than the purpose made up for you by said marketing. Diaspora made a name for itself as a facebook clone before friendica did. Not making it as a pop culture splash could be the reason why friendica supports every protocol it can get it's hands on.
@namark
I get what you're saying about marketing but doesn't federation make the number of early adopters on a particular service irrelevant? The fact that diaspora has a lot more users doesn't really have much practical effect when I can interact with it's users via other software.
@b6hydra how does you being able to interact with the userbase of diaspora make the userbase of diaspora irrelevant?
You can also interact with people through email and host a website, nothing has "much practical effect", it's all marketing and pop culture. Diaspora was "the facebook clone" and that's why it exists, not because it's practical, mastodon is "the tweeter clone" and that's why it exits. Even with a common "protocol" the interop is patchy and requires special consideration in many cases. With activity pub alone you can't even discover all the users/posts from another mastodon instance let alone other types of servers. And at the end of the day you still need an email to sign up to all of these fads.
@b6hydra yes that's my point and the part I think you were missing in trying to make some sort of objective sense of it all in practical terms. I'm not bothered by any of it, I went with mastodon cause I like the elephant. You seemed to be bothered by the existence of diaspora, and I believe I answered your question directly. It's not a thought experiment, it's the reality of software industry today, and the only defeatism would be the pretense that any of it is somehow objectively or practically sensible.
@namark
So your point is that these services are all just poorly implemented fads conjured from pop culture via marketing? If that's the case then why bother at all?
It's an interesting existential thought experiment, in a defeatist sort of way, but it has nothing to do with my question.