It's been maybe a month since I joined Diaspora*, the social network. It's still in Alpha development (it's expected to move to Beta soon), so there are glitches, and features which have yet to be implemented, but nevertheless, I like it. One of it's best features, which I think I've mentioned before, is the notion of following tags. Hashtags actually, to give them their proper name. If you're familiar with Twitter, then you'll know that a hashtag is a keyword prefixed by the hash symbol (#).
#photography is a hashtag which I follow on Diaspora*, which means that I will see posts in my stream from any user who tags a public post with the #photography hashtag, regardless of whether they are my 'friend' or not. I've found some excellent photographers who share their work via public posts, and I am able to 'like' their photos, or comment on them, to show my appreciation, without having to commit to any sort of relationship (although the option of adding them to my contacts list is also available).
There is a need for a better hashtag filtering system to enable users to filter out content they'd rather not see, and I'm told it's on the developer's agenda. At the moment it's only possible to ignore particular users, a feature I've made use of once to filter out posts from someone who seemed desperate to provoke a reaction by posting gay porn photos. It took me a day or two before I figured out how to 'ignore' him (it's actually very easy once you know how), but I was impressed that no one gave any reaction to his posts - no comments, nothing. A mature response to his immaturity.
Anyway, if I've tickled your interest, you can click on this Diaspora* link to ask for an invitation to join (I don't know how quick the response will be), or you can ask me and I will invite you directly.
In the meantime, I also follow the #gif hastag and here are a couple of animated gifs that came my way.
The first is reminiscent of M C Escher's famous hands drawing
And the second is, well, just watch it and see.
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