August 28, 2010 by Jen
An open alternative to Facebook will be launched on 15 September, the developers of the new project have announced. The site is described as a social networking service which enables members to have a much greater level of control over their privacy options than Facebook.
Named ‘Diaspora’, the new network is marketing itself as a ‘personally-controlled’ site which made news headlines at the beginning of the year, when Facebook was forced to address its privacy settings. Facebook authorities were forced to simplify setting on the site to make them less confusing for their members.
Diaspora, as an open-source project, was developed by four students in the United States, and has so far raised around £140,000 from sponsorship and donations. The students (one mathematician and three computer scientists), are based in New York.
They came up with the idea for Diaspora when Facebook came under fire for its lackadaisical approach to member security and privacy settings. The students used Kickstarter to generate funds for the project, and generated their funds from almost six and a half thousand people donating to the project. According to news reports, even the founder of Facebook, Mark Zuckerberg, contributed to the development of the site.
One of the three founders of Diaspora, Maz Salzberg, was interviewed by the BBC about the project. “We want to put users back in control of what they share,” he commented.
“We have Diaspora working, we like it, and it will be open-sourced on September 15th. Our team has spent the entire summer building clear, contextual sharing. That means an intuitive way for users to decide, and not notice deciding, what content goes to their co-workers and what goes to their drinking buddies. We know that’s a hard [user interface] problem and we take it seriously.”
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