Facebook alternative Diaspora eyes launch date

Wednesday, 01 September 2010 15:02

Written by Editor

An open alternative to Facebook will be launched on  September 15th, the developers of the project have said. Diaspora describes itself as a "privacy-aware, personally-controlled" social network. The open-source project made headlines earlier this year when Facebook was forced to simplify its privacy settings, after they were criticised for being overly complex and confusing. The project, developed by four US students, raised $200,000 (£140,000)."We have Diaspora working, we like it, and it will be open-sourced on September 15th," the team wrote on their blog.

The team said they had spent the 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."

The project was started by three computer scientists and one mathematician from New York.