As expected, the Diaspora team has released the source code and posted screenshots of Diaspora as it stands now. It is not ready for public usage yet, but they have released the source code so that interested developers can play around with it.

Currently the main features of Diaspora are:

• Share status messages and photos privately and in near real time with your friends through “aspects”.
• Friend people across the Internet no matter where Diaspora seed is located.
• Manage friends using “aspects”
• Upload of photos and albums
• All traffic is signed and encrypted (except photos, for now).

By the time they release the first Alpha in October, the expect Diaspora to have more additional features like Facebook compatibility and data portability.

The interface looks minimalistic and clean. It has status updates, comments etc. like Facebook - which it is looking to compete against. Here are a few screenshots which they have posted:

Developers can download the code from github - http://github.com/diaspora/diaspora

Read more about it here.