How to make Diaspora* viral

There is certainly a lot more to be done to make Diaspora known and attractive, and to make the signup process (by which I mean the understanding of a distributed network and choice of a ‘home’ in Diaspora) less opaque.

About that, how about proposing to user paying turnkeys solution to host their pods ? I mean : the diaspora* foundation would take care about reserving a domain name, a host provider, install the solution and maintain it ?

The cost of the solution would only be the cost of the domain reservation, hosting plus a little margin for the maintenance ?

You can already do both of these things (and more) on Pod Uptime. Just click a column header to have data ordered by that column.

I think, maybe it should propose a pod. The user would only have to answer a few question, like "which country do you come from ?" and would select a pod or a list of pods based on the answers ?

Currently, choosing a pod is not very easy. E.g (base on the french version of diasporafoundation.org) : selecting "Choose a pod", redirects to the wiki, in english... You have to choose "Subscribe" to get to the list of pods and, believe me, this list is too much looong...

Having too much choice isn't a good thing. People don't want to spend too much time to choose a pod. I think the website should propose a list not longer than 5 or 6 items, eliminating the development pods.

And there is too much informations. For example, knowing the diaspora* version the pod runs in not revelant for the beginner I think...

And now, in the "be careful what you wish for" category…

Diaspora went viral enough that ISIS and the BBC picked it up.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-28843350

We can't control every user...

And now, in the “be careful what you wish for” category…
Diaspora went viral enough that ISIS and the BBC picked it up.
http://www.bbc.com/news/world-middle-east-28843350

diaspora-fr.org is being invaded by them... Maybe it's time to make something ?
Should we create a thread to talk about the question ?

@augier Maybe we should invest in getting the TOS/PP code integrated into Diaspora pods so that podmins can say up front at the time of registration that they don't want to host that kind of content.

I don"t think TOS are going to stop terrorists... :(

No, but it certainly gives the podmin a bit of an extra buffer to purge those kinds of accounts, shrug and say "Hey, you agreed to this."

@goob That big list can be very bewildering to a new user. I was trying to sign up somebody I met at a local meetup. I had to first point out the link to podupti.me on the JoinDiaspora site. Then he just started at the list for about 5-10 minutes. I couldn't recommend a pod to him, because the one I use (diasp.org) isn't accepting any new users. (Which brings up the question: Why even have the closed pods in the default view in the first place?) He wound up scrolling around the table and his eyes glazed over. He never did sign up.

This guy is a techie. He's a programmer who runs Kubuntu on his laptop and owns a Firefox OS phone! If he's intimidated by the sign-up process, something is wrong. I know that's just one data point, but I've gotten similar reactions from other techie friends. I think this is something we should at least put some study into.

Something to guide the user to a solution might help: have them identify their country and the countries with pods that are up and open (maybe with the option to filter develop/current/previous, then sort by uptime descending) might make it less daunting.

I'll say it again: the tools available to help new users (explanations of how to choose and pod and how to sign up in the tutorials; Pod Uptime; and so on) can definitely be improved, as can our communication with the outside world about how diaspora* works. However, the solution is this; it is not to use marketing gimmicks to convince people to sign up.