A Tutorial and Introduction to Diaspora for Users

Diaspora is a new social networking system that I find compelling even right now in its new, barely realized state. For an Alpha release, it is amazingly stable, brilliant in the simplicity of its design, and astonishing in the power it offers.

I could go on about the cool server features that mean your data is really yours and other features like that, but this intro is for people curious about how to actually use Diaspora. Because Diaspora's core concepts are very simple and tremendously powerful, but leave some people wondering how to use them.

Throughout this tutorial I make reference to specific URLs on the server I use, joindiaspora.com. If you're on another server, for example diasp.org, substitute that server name instead.

Diaspora's developers take a "constant small improvements" attitude to their work. Instead of building up a huge backlog of fixes for their code and rolling it all out in one massive change that requires taking sites down to implement, once you start using Diaspora you'll notice that change happens gradually, one problem gone, one feature added at a time.
Similarly, this guide gets weekly, if not daily updates as new things roll out to Diaspora.

What is Diaspora for?

Totally private social networking. Sounds like a contradiction, right? While it can't stop someone you've shared something with from copy-pasting posts you've made, it can totally stop:

corporate data mining

Mom seeing your drunk party pics. (But your drunk friends can.)

Dad seeing who are your reprobate friends. (or your reprobate buddies from knowing who your dad is)

Anyone from knowing how you have organized your contacts. (so no one knows you put them in the "losers" Aspect)

All your info from being tied to one server, or even software platform. (so you can keep it totally safe, but share it with whom you want)

Ads mixed in with your social network.

Ever seeing another Farmville solicitation

If you've ever been tempted to create another Facebook account to separate aspects of your life from each other, what you need is Diaspora. (By the way, Facebook forbids you from having multiple accounts.)

Let's Use Diaspora

Let's assume you have a Diaspora invite, or got onto an alpha server that doesn't require invites.
The most important user difference between Diaspora and social networking sites you might be familiar with is that by default, Diaspora shares nothing with anyone.

Contacts

OK, so the first thing are contacts. For Diaspora to do much, you need some. If you got an invite, you have at least one, who hopefully has more. People are friendly there and many need contacts just like you do. Send them a request by clicking on their picture, which takes you to their public profile. You can also take a look at the hashtag search page at joindiaspora.com for the public posts of people who might accept a share request.

Aspects

Aspects are the key idea in Diaspora. These are the different faces you present to the world, how you organize and interact with the people you share with. They can be as totally private as you want (for example a Diary Aspect that contains no contacts) or as public as you wish, where even Google can search and index your posts.

The critical thing to keep in mind is that contacts in one Aspect never see things posted in another Aspect.

As I recall, Diaspora starts you off with 2 Aspects: Work and Family. Create new Aspects as they occur to you by clicking on the + sign in the title bar. There's no limit that I know of. I have Aspects for Gaming, Medievalism, Politics, Pictures, Apple, and of course Tutorials.

Once you have a reasonable set of Aspects to reflect your interests or social circles, it is time to put your Contacts in them. Go to joindiaspora.com/aspects/manage (or to the same URL on your server, whatever it is) and drag unassigned Contacts from their place over on the left to their first Aspect on the right.
Or click on any contact to add more Aspects to them or change them. Yes, a given Contact can be in more than one Aspect. You might have a friend who is into gaming, so they would go into Friends and Gaming. Or your mom might be your boss.

Now click on All Aspects up in the title bar. It takes you to joindiaspora.com/aspects. This shows all your posts in all Aspects plus any posts made by Contacts of yours. It does not matter to you what Aspect a contact has put you in, it only matters that your Contacts are in your Aspects.

So now, you can get more exclusive. As you read this, if All Aspects is highlighted above, go ahead and click on Family. (I'm going to assume you've kept that, if not, pick another you have, like Weird Loner, whatever.)

You're now in just one Aspect. You'll only see your posts that are tagged with that Aspect, and your posts that are tagged with World, which is a special case we'll get to in a minute. You'll also see posts from your contacts who are in the Family (or Weird Loner) Aspect.

Services: Facebook, Twitter, and the World

Once you have your Aspects and Contacts roughly organized, you may want to let your friends on Facebook and or Twitter know. Or maybe you just don't want to post stuff to three different places. Diaspora lets you link your accounts with these outside services to your Diaspora profile. Set that up at https://joindiaspora.com/services

There's also one other automatically configured "service:" The World. Any post, from any or multiple Aspects, may be shared to the World. When you do that, it still appears in your Aspect posts as normal, but it also appears at a freely viewable/world readable page findable by clicking on your Diaspora name near the top right of the page.

Now, it is often handy to post things to the World because your audience might include people who are not Contacts of yours. But be aware that when you do so that post becomes available to all Aspects. So posting to your Drunken Party Pics Aspect + the World has a very similar effect to posting to all your Aspects. That effect is called "getting busted by your boss/mom."

Little Things

Hiding a post

If someone in an Aspect of yours makes a post that you don't care about, you can usually ignore it and it will slowly (or quickly) fall to the bottom of your page. But if it attracts a lot of comment, or just if your father-in-law insists on posting pics of his ugly dog, you can hide any post. Just move your cursor over the post you want to hide and at the far right of where the Contact's name appears, a small "x" becomes visible. Click that, and the post vanishes. You can undo that until you reload the page.

Resharing

Sometimes you might post something in a few of your Aspects, then realize you need to post it elsewhere too. Just like hiding, move your cursor over a post, and if it is possible for you to reshare it, a Reshare link appears. Click on that to choose an Aspect of yours that you want to post it to. If you've posted something to all your Aspects, you can't Reshare it again. Where would it go?

Sort by Activity or Post Time

Right at the top of your Diaspora posts, there's a small bit of text that says "sort by: activity | post time." One of these is a link, the other is how you currently have your posts sorted. Sorting by post time is straightforward: the oldest posts are at the bottom, newest at the top. But by activity is probably better for most people, as that makes any post that has a new comment attached pop up to the top. It is a simpler way to follow discussions among your Contacts, at least to me. But try it both ways.

Gotchas

As you add Contacts to Aspects, keep in mind that new Contacts do not see anything you posted prior to you adding them. There is no getting access to someone's Aspect and reading back to the beginning of their appearance on Diaspora. Posts don't have to be brand new to pop into visibility for a new Contact: it could just have a new comment attached to it by the poster or anyone else who can already see it.
If you move someone who has posted while in an Aspect out of that Aspect, their posts made prior to the move stay visible in that previous Aspect. Only future posts appear in the new Aspect!

Your Diaspora address looks just like an email address, but depending on the server you're signed up on, it very likely does not act as one. At least not now. I'm sure that functionality is planned, if not already in place. But each server is essentially a small group of people's private project, so it is hard to blame them for not turning on a feature that would give free email accounts to everyone.

Give Diaspora a try! While I'm on a server that requires invitations, I hear good things about diasp.org. It has open sign-ups, so you don't need an invite. Find me there as corby@joindiaspora.com, (which is not an email address) and ask questions if you have them.

Part Two: Formatting Text in Diaspora

Part Three: Tips and Tricks for Using Diaspora's Aspects.