Facebook is the most popular social networking site on the internet today. What started as a college project by a couple of Harvard students, is now a multibillion-dollar internet giant. Here, in the United States, Facebook surpasses even Google in terms of daily visitors.
One of the reasons why Facebook has been able to capture the imagination of the internet generation is because of its security settings. If a particular user wishes to view the profile of another user, the latter needs to confirm the former as a friend. The photo sharing social networking site was probably the first to employ this feature.
Facebook is at the peak of its popularity, but there have been various concerns raised over its esteemed security features by netizens in recent times. A major concern has been related to the photos that a user uploads and how easily it can be hacked by an unknown user. The second concern has been the leaking of user information by Facebook to marketers.
If you are fed up with the lack of privacy the premier social networking site provides, then it is probably time to shift your account to another networking site that is being touted as the new Facebook.
Diaspora is the name of the ‘anti-Facebook’ project, and is an initiative by one mathematician, Maxwell Salzberg, and three computer science students, Daniel Grippi, Raphael Sofaer, and llya Zhitomirskiy, who are all from New York University. The new social networking site is garnering a lot of buzz in the internet and beyond as it promises to be the first Open Source networking platform where users have total control over their accounts. This directly translates into complete security over your information and precious photos.
The million-dollar question (literally) to be asked is whether we need another social networking site when there already exists alternatives to Facebook such as MySpace, Friendster, and the likes. The answer is that there is a need for networking platform that provides the full circle of social connectivity that Facebook offers but is missing in the above-mentioned alternatives.
If you are wondering whether Diaspora should be viewed as a serious contender to Facebook, consider the following fact: in their fund raising initiative, Diaspora managed to raise $200,642 that includes a healthy donation from none other than Facebook CEO, Mark Zuckerberg.
The ‘new Facebook’ is set to go live on the 15th of September this year. A date you would probably want to mark on your calendar.
However, those who are a regular on Facebook, can check out Enough with Applications on Facebook and Facebook Privacy Settings.
