Okay, let me explain things for all the slightly confused #newhere people.

Diaspora*

Diaspora is a open source, distributed social network developed by programmers around the world. It operates on different "pods". Where each pod is a server that holds your data. And pods communicate with each other to form the Diaspora network. This design makes Diaspora resilient to #cyberattacks and enhances #privacy. And pod taken down by hackers or governments will only effect the users on the pod. Users on other pods are still safe.

Do note that although pods are interconnected. You can only login form the pod your account it on. Logging in from other pods will result in nothing besides error messages.

thefederation

The Federation is a network formed by serval social networks.
- Diaspora - FAQ-Tutorial-Rules
- Friendica - FAQ-Support
- Hubzilla - About-Tutorial-Video
- Socialhome
- GangGo

They are interconnected. Posts on one network is shared with the others, but each network has different features and looks.

Hashtags and posting

Like Twitter we use #hashtags and sharing. If a stranger’s post has a #hashtag you are following, it will show up in your stream. If you are sharing with someone, you will see all of their posts.
Also, upon clicking the buttons on top of the post editor. Weird text are inserted. That is absolutely normal. Diaspora uses the Markdown format for all the post. It's ... kinda a standard for the developers working on the project.

Helping to develop diaspora

I'm getting tired (it's 1 AM when I'm writing this post) now, please refer to this post for information regarding how to contribute to the Diaspora project directly. (Technical skills needed)

Have a nice time on #Diaspora*