September 15th, Official Switch From Facebook Day

If you hate Facebook, mark the date September 15th in your calendar. The guys from Diaspora, the anti-Facebook, have announced that their product is ready to ship and will be open sourced in mid-September. The software began life as a Kickstarter project looking for $10,000 and ended up pulling in $200,642, allegedly including a donation by Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg. Various alternatives to Facebook exist, but none provide the same full circle of social connectivity. Diaspora has the lofty goal of capturing what people love about Facebook while completely alleviating the security and privacy concerns. With 500 million users, it’s unlikely Facebook will be a ghost town by September 16th, but users are clearly concerned about the ongoing questions about Facebook’s intentions regarding their data, and this could be enough to kickstart a revolution. The team understands the lofty goals they face, and aren’t shirking their duties. They hope to offer “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.” I’ll be there on day one and like most people I’m curious to see if four kids from NYU can topple Zuckerberg and his empire of inadequacy.