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Diaspora, the open Facebook competitor, will launch on 9/15
Diaspora, the much talked about open competitor to Facebook, has set a launch date of September 15. We've extensively debated Diaspora's chances of success here on Download Squad, and the real test is about to begin. We'll finally see how Diaspora has used that $200,000 in donations -- the most ever raised by a single project on Kickstarter.com.
Apparently, flashy features have been put on the back burner in favor of working on a system of intuitively deciding which groups have access to your information. It sounds like the four NYU kids who founded the project are taking the privacy angle seriously. That's good, considering that the Diaspora concept arose in response to Facebook's bungling of its own privacy challenges.
Comments
8
Subscribe to comments216Aug 27th 2010 8:50AM
I doubt it will work, and I'm thinking if it is successful it will probably be bought out by FB before it gets too big.
Nonetheless its an admirable venture
vertigo_831Aug 27th 2010 10:55AM
Well, FB, Zuckerberg at least, already made a fairly heavy "contribution" to the team, so they've already got some hands in things, but if FB does swallow the team up, perhaps it will improve things for the end users. While competition is good and it would be nice to have a new face on the scene, it's already more hassle to keep IM clients straight and remember whether your friends are on AIM, ICQ, MSN, Gtalk, Skype.... you get my drift
SadPandaAug 27th 2010 12:13PM
I'll sign up for this if for no other reason than to show that I want a social network... just not FB.
jfjbAug 27th 2010 1:59PM
I suppose everyone knows what 'diaspora' means.
So why is there no one talking about THAT?
Was there any reference or meaning put into choosing this name?
I'm asking 'cause the noun diaspora -- with or without a capital letter -- has nothing to do with privacy, or did I miss something when I shlept under the rock of the Wall, you know, the other wall of Jerusalem?
Glad to help with more food for thoughts instead of re-igniting embers of time past. Oops, I just did, didn't I?
My 2 ยข, of course.
Jay HathawayAug 27th 2010 2:01PM
I think "Diaspora" was chosen because they're hoping for a mass migration of users away from Facebook. I know there's some uncomfortable historical context there, but they were going for the dictionary definition of the word.
JayAug 29th 2010 10:45PM
I was actually thinking of starting my own social network called Golgotha
jfjbAug 28th 2010 1:44PM
@ jay Hathaway
... so FaceBook is Babylonia?
In this case, it will not be a migration, it will be a dispersion -- according to the etymological definition: "a dispersion of an originally homogeneous people."
Migration makes me think of birds going to warm climates to perpetuate quietly their progeny during the winter. But migration is a two-way journey, BACK TO... FaceBook?
Dispersion is like ejaculation or spreading -- salt, seeds, the good word -- to sow or stock a new generation of whatever is being dispersed and which shall grown WHERE it blooms.
JasonSep 1st 2010 6:17AM
Current system: Facebook (MZ) provides "free" service, 500,000,000 people use the service, MZ mines data/profiles from 500,000,000 people, MZ sells profiles to advertisers for $Billions. Advertisers expose 500,000,000 people to unwanted messages. I know that people can be gullible and sheep-like but surely at some point there will be a revolution.
People will collaborate, demand the services that they want, the privacy they want, accept advertising messages on their terms and decide the allocation of their own advertising revenues (either back to themselves or to their favourite causes)