Tech & Biz

Facebook Alternative: Diaspora Surpasses $100,000 in Microfunding

by Jordan Yerman | May 13, 2010 at 08:17 am

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Diaspora: Open-Source Facebook Alternative

Diaspora, the "open-source Facebook", has surpassed $100,000 in funding through Kickstarter, which allows donations as small as $1. The impressive aspect here is that Diaspora doubled its funding in one day, and doubled it again the next day, going from $23,676 to $58, to $100,000. Diaspora aims for a user-controlled social networking platform, wherein the account holder will have total control over their own account. (Diaspora project details)

Interest in the Diaspora project has clearly spiked due to the bad press, and negative user experiences, surrounding Facebook's latest round of changes.

Diaspora has 20 more days to raise funds through Kickstarter; surpassing $200,000 seems inevitable, even within a week. Coding for the project begins in summer 2010, with a September 2010 release date. Time will tell whether or not founders Daniel Grippi, Maxwell Salzberg, Raphael Sofaer, and Ilya Zhitomirskiy have a viable product, but the spike in searches for "facebook alternative" tells a clear story: people want this.

Anytime anything doubles in one day, it’s impressive, but even more impressive about Diaspora’s fundraising is that it’s all being done through micro-funding on Kickstarter. So far, some 1,625 people have donated the $58,000.

The comment thread on Diaspora's Kickstarter page shows that lots of people have literally put their money where their mouths are in wanting to cut the Facebook cord.

The message to Facebook that this sends: you are not safe. Stop thinking like a monopoly. Meanwhile, four NYU kids have reimagined the social networking platform as something other than a marketing farm.