Diaspora* Team Launches Makr.io
Greetings from Diaspora*!
It’s been awhile since we sent out our last update, and we wanted to give you all the lowdown on what we have been up to around DiasporaHQ the past few months.
In case you hadn’t heard, we were accepted into YCombinator‘s Summer 2012 batch. We came in working on some radical new ideas for Diaspora*; you may have seen a few users with new fancy profiles and a shiny new publisher. After seeking advice from our mentors, and receiving feedback from the Diaspora* community, we realized these ideas could have legs of their own. After much thought, we decided that bringing such drastic change to the current Diaspora* software that thousands of people worldwide use everyday might be more disruptive than beneficial at this time.
Thus, Makr.io was born, and we launched last week! We wanted to spend some time on a unique problem we discovered while working on Diaspora* the past couple of years—the value of ownership. Existing social networks do not encourage their users to feel like they have the power to MAKE things on the internet. Rather they are just “capturing” the ephemeral social actions that define social networks today. With Makr, we are making creativity accessible to everyone, in the hopes it enables people to realize that what you post and create online is **worth** owning. The idea is simple: make a new post with words and photos, and then any other user can ‘remix’ your post, creating an endless collective conversation that can be inspiring or hilarious. We put a lot of ourselves in Makr, and the result is something fun, silly, and collaborative, but also rooted in the same values as Diaspora* that we have championed since day one. You can read more about our Makr mission here.
Makr has turned out to be an awesome companion project to Diaspora*, and we want to assure you we aren’t going anywhere. Diaspora* is still near and dear to our hearts and we remain passionate about its community. Creating Makr has allowed us to restart our creative juices and think up some incredible new ideas and concepts for Diaspora*. We have some exciting Diaspora* core updates on in the coming week, so be sure to stay tuned.
Thanks for being with us,
Maxwell, Daniel, Rosanna and Kayla
P.S. As always, you can learn more about Diaspora* and find a list of available pods to join on www.diasporaproject.org We have also opened up signups on joindiaspora.com
P.P.S. You can follow Makr.io Updates straight from Diaspora*, makrio@joindiaspora.com.
