I was doing some research online about Facebook and came across a ton of media attention about this “alternative” to Facebook called Diaspora. Curiosity killed the cat, so I decided to hit up my good old friend Google and do some research on Diaspora to find out more about the concept.

Apparently Diaspora is an open-source social network that its site creators Daniel Grippi, Maxwell Salzberg, Raphael Sofaer and Ilya Zhitomirskiy describe as a “distributed network, where totally separate computers connect to each other directly.” The creators also said the new site will allow connection without surrendering privacy.

Well, I’m wondering why I would ever want to use these guys versus FB. I mean, Facebook’s privacy policy has been an issue in the past, but I don’t, and never have had a problem with it, in fact I don’t even notice it.

Though a praiseworthy attempt, and it’s completely astounding what these kids have done, pushing privacy on their way draw to mass attraction is simply a problem that will bring them down before they can even get up.

Diaspora might be useful but it’s concept is way too similar to Facebook and, I can’t help but notice it might be hard to manage and could be very arduous (they offer a hosted version, so Diaspora will require its users to download and install a veritable Web server on their computer). I’m not sold at all on the application. It sounds like it could take us back rather than push us forward.

FYI Diaspora boys, you are onto something good here, but don’t promise too much. Facebook has walked the world and has made huge social networking footprints throughout; you better have some big feet.

• September 8th, 2010
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• Tags: calgary, diaspora, facebook, online marketing, social media