Diaspora puts out Developer Release -- source code is here!

Diaspora has just offered up their first public release – a developer version of the platform.

In their own words, Diaspora is "in its infancy," but now everyone can see exactly what's going on in the code base, and hopefully pitch in with some help. This code is far from production-ready, but it is a solid indication that the Diaspora guys have been using their crowdsourced startup money for more than mojitos.

According to Diaspora's post, here are some of the features that are already implemented:

• Share status messages and photos privately (and in near real time) with your friends through "aspects."
• Friend people across the Internet no matter where Diaspora seed is located.
• Manage friends using "aspects."
• Upload photos and albums.
• All traffic is signed and encrypted (except photos, for now).

"Aspects" seems to be a favorite buzzword here. The only explanation I could find in the post was: "We live our real lives in context, speaking from whatever aspect of ourselves that those around us know. Social tools should work the same way." That actually makes sense to me, and I feel it's something Facebook is sorely lacking (even with "groups").

You can see screenshots in the original post. Note that the screenshots are small in the post and aren't linked to hi-res files, but if you right-click and download them, you get full-resolution images (that's how I got the screenshot for this post). And for those of us who aren't coders, Diaspora says the first Alpha is due to be released in October.

Tags: aspects, diaspora, facebook, open-source, opensource, social networking, SocialNetworking, source