Just came across a pretty insane piece of history while perusing Wikipedia. Evan Prodromou's father co-founded Poqet PC. Evan is the father of the #fediverse for anyone who doesn't know his name.
Laconica (which became StatusNet): May 2008
Mistpark (which later became Friendica and much later became Mistpark again): July 2010.
Diaspora*: September (?) 2010.
Those are the approximate dates of first public availability, not the dates that development began. Mistpark development began as a blogging and content management project (PurpleHaze) in 2002 but did not provide confederated communications until around May 2010. Diaspora development began with a Kickstarter campaign in April/May 2010. I don't know when Laconica development began.
Mistpark (which later became Friendica and much later became Mistpark again): July 2010.
Diaspora*: September (?) 2010.
Those are the approximate dates of first public availability, not the dates that development began. Mistpark development began as a blogging and content management project (PurpleHaze) in 2002 but did not provide confederated communications until around May 2010. Diaspora development began with a Kickstarter campaign in April/May 2010. I don't know when Laconica development began.
@zap thanks for that history Mike. Did you look up to Laconica when you first started the federation in Mistpark? Or if not what were your “idols” when you first started trying to code federated social networking?