Here’s a bit on the people who made Pluspora and their philosophy.

Here’s a bit on the people who made Pluspora and their philosophy.

I don’t know whether a Diaspora-based solution would ever be right for this community, but at least their heads seem to be in the right place.

Originally shared by Di Cleverly

Are we all Vic Gundotra now?

A good friend of mine from my favorite social media network (+John R. Ellis) and I were chatting. He told me he had read an article about how Friendster had evolved from a nice leading platform to one that was focused on profits leading to a downturn.

“There are no known solutions to problems like trolls and hackers and spammers vs ease of use by legit members, and anything the good people can use (like a private community) then the bad people can use those too (terrorists, pedophiles, etc.). It is a tool. And the tool needs cash flow to maintain it and improve it – which means either the members pay for it, or they are a commodity used by advertisers of some sort. I have no solutions.” John lamented.

But there might be a solution! You see, another good friend ( +David Thiery) and I set up a diaspora pod of our own, named www.Pluspora.com.

We paid for a virtual private Linux cloud server, the domain name, and set up all the rules and the system. We targeted who we wanted to invite (a very small group of people we had already connected with who knew each other and had similar interests). In 36 hours, we had a pretty rocking little private party room, with a lot of friends. The advantages were that we controlled the data and privacy, we got to keep spammers and trolls out, and we got to decide the rules. And the cost was affordable and the administrative duties were light. Then the topic came up that we could link this room to other rooms on the git-hub based diaspora source code. Wow! This has been going on for about a month now. Then today came the announcement we had all feared; GPlus was shutting down for good. Everyone is asking “What comes next”?

So is this the future of social media? Small linkable git-hub based privately-run mutual interest communities.

A person could belong to 5 or 6, link all of them through a single app, and even run one for themselves for photography, or Dungeons and Dragons, easily and cheaply. The owners control who comes in, who stays, what the rules are, and who controls the data. Social media as a hobby? Are we all Zuckerberg now? Technology changes. We have the technology to set up and run our own social media sites. We no longer have to be sheep, pawns, used and stripped of our data, force fed ads for gray-hair dye we don’t need just because we are certain age group.

I don’t know where social media is headed; I know I love it. I don’t want to give it up, but I know it needs to change, and radically. The big sites won’t ever go away, but I’m ready for social 2.0 and this might just be the direction it takes! How about you? For community leaders out there, I ask you, would you consider starting a diaspora pod? Reach out to David or I to find out how. Start one based on your interest with your community, and let’s link them. We can share resources and keep the Google Plus community together. We are ALL +Vic Gundotra now.