New social network promises privacy

Michael Carroll | August 30, 2010

telecomseurope.net

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A new open-source social network that aims to offer subscribers more control over the information they share than Facebook will launch on September 15, developers say.

The team behind the $200,000 Diaspora project say the site is running and that source code will be released mid-month, ahead of schedule.

“We have shifted our development timeline,” the group say in a blog, promising that the first release will be the real deal, “not a finished summer project.”

Diaspora’s unique selling point is its high-level privacy settings, which allow subscribers to denote the information they want to share with which friends.

The site hit the headlines earlier this year after Facebook subscribers threatened to quit the social networking site over its loose privacy practices.

Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg is reportedly one of 6,500 people who invested in Diaspora as it cashed in on the publicity, raising over $200,000 in the process, the BBC reported.

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Michael Carroll