Facebook and Diaspora
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Diaspora alternatives
The 'Facebook killer' won't look like Facebook | Tampa Bay, St. Petersburg, Clearwater, Sarasota | WTSP.com
(CNN) -- In the spring of this year, the "Facebook alternative" Diaspora achieved extensive media coverage -- including an article in the New York Times -- and raised tens of thousands of dollars in funding from online donors. The pitch was an appealing one: In the midst of a privacy backlash at Facebook, Diaspora proposed a more private alternative to the leading social network. Diaspora, which began sending out invites this week, attempts to outclass Facebook in privacy features and user freedom. Features include granular control over who sees your information, the ability to download your photos and the option to delete your account without any hassle. With $200,000 now raised for the project, you'd think Diaspora was off to a great start.
Facebook Alternative Diaspora Launches Their Private Alpha With Some Bet Hedging
We’ve been tracking the progress of Diaspora , the open-source Facebook alternative, since before the project even started . That’s because the idea got so much buzz on the crowdsourced micro-funding site Kickstarter , that they were able to turn a goal of raising $10,000 in 39 days into $200,000 from 6,500 backers in the same timeframe. But with such high expectations, you have to deliver. And many expressed doubts that the small team of college students could do that. After the money came in, the team sequestered themselves for the Summer to work on the project. Despite some hiccups, they were able to unveil the source of the project in September to mixed reviews.
Following a release of initial source code back in September, the first group of private alpha invites for Facebook alternative Diaspora were released to users on Tuesday. Mashable managed to snag some invites and has put together a gallery to show you the service and how it looks right now. The story behind Diaspora, which was started by four New York University students , goes back about six months to the first Facebook privacy crisis of the summer. Disillusioned with the social networking giant’s privacy settings (or lack thereof), the Diaspora team decided to try to do something different. Using Kickstarter , the team hoped to raise $10,000 so that they could start working on the project over the summer.
Hands-on With Facebook Alternative Diaspora [PICS]
Creating a Network Like Facebook, Only Private
David Goldman for The New York Times Ilya Zhitomirskiy, 20, far left; Dan Grippi, 21; Max Salzberg, 22; and Raphael Sofaer, 19, all students at N.Y.U., are trying to reinvent social networking online. A few months back, four geeky college students, living on pizza in a computer lab downtown on Mercer Street, decided to build a social network that wouldn’t force people to surrender their privacy to a big business. It would take three or four months to write the code, and they would need a few thousand dollars each to live on. They announced their project on April 24. They reached their $10,000 goal in 12 days, and the money continues to come in: as of Tuesday afternoon, they had raised $23,676 from 739 backers.
Remember when Facebook really was a private club? In the days before we called anything a “social network?” When “sharing” and “connecting” wasn’t bait for the switch of “monetizing” the stuff and nonsense of our lives?
NYU Students Aim to Invent Facebook (Again). We’ve Got Your Back. | Epicenter
We are four talented young programmers from NYU’s Courant Institute trying to raise money so we can spend the summer building Diaspora; an open source personal web server that will put individuals in control of their data. What is it? Enter your Diaspora “seed,” a personal web server that stores all of your information and shares it with your friends.
Decentralize the web with Diaspora
So what would we need to implement an open, decentralized alternative to Facebook?
We're sick of Facebook. We have a right to be: reneging on privacy promises, asserting ownership of our individual data, refusing to let us archive our own data or scavenge our friends' data. It's a big problem. So why did we gravitate toward Facebook in the first place?