Diaspora had been getting a lot of press lately, and while I do think that utilizing peer-too-peer and distributed computing technologies to give users back the control over their social and personal information us a good idea, I`m not sure that server-style software is the right way to achieve this.
If breakup of the dominance of big, centralized, services in the social computing sphere is to be achieved, it should be done in the same manner that central FTP archives were made obsolete by P2P software and IM networks by multi-protocol clients – By writing convenient desktop software that will merge in the services of multiple providers to eliminate differentiation and facilitate competition.
Ifblog (ponderings 2.0) 