Open Facebook Competitor Diaspora Sets 9/15 Launch Date Read More

Wired: Open Facebook Competitor Diaspora Sets 9/15 Launch Date  Read More

Diaspora, a nascent open competitor to Facebook that raised $200,000 from online contributors, will launch their much-anticipated service on Sept. 15, the company said today in a blog post.

The project aims to create a social network that puts users in charge of their own data.

Or as they put it a “privacy-aware, personally controlled, do-it-all, open source social network.”

Diaspora was started by four New York University students earlier this year after hearing a talk from Free Software guru Richard Stallman Eben Moglen, who said that Facebook’s founder Mark Zuckerberg had done more harm to the world than anyone his age ever had.

Diaspora’s idea of taking on the social network giant  gained momentum and wide publicity in the spring following yet another controversial Facebook attempt to make users share more information publicly. …