[jedsmith]

The mockups look great.

Gut reaction is that you are clearly inspired by Facebook, but there's only so many ways to peel this particular orange. I'd consider a primary color change as a quick and painless way to distance the two; I think it's the blue that's keying me to Facebook the most. There's an argument about whether that's fair, that they psychologically own social blue in my mind, but better to differentiate (in my mind).

[michaelchisari]

there's only so many ways to peel this particular orange.

It's true, there's certain paradigms that just work, and I played around quite a bit with more experimental approaches, and I just couldn't see the user flow working in a way that didn't throw users completely for a loop.

I'd consider a color change as a quick and painless way to distance the two.

With the beauty of Appleseed themes and CSS, I'll probably try and have three or four variations on this layout for the 1.0 release.

[jdp23]

agreed, definitely try to lead with one that has less facebook-y and diaspora-y colors

[oniTony]

Most social networks are in various shades of blue. http://www.quora.com/Why-are-most-social-networking-sites-bl...

[michaelchisari]

I'll concur with this. Originally, Appleseed was green, and people hated it. I tried various different color schemes, and while I don't think social software has to be blue, blue color schemes are definitely the easiest to make work.