Back in May of this year, in the midst of Facebook’s big privacy blunders, and concerns that were born from them, Diaspora emerged. Diaspora started with the idea to create an open-source project to take on Facebook, a project that anyone could contribute to, one that offers a free software so that anyone can own their own social graph. They launched with the goal of bringing in $10,000 worth of contributions to get started. Amazingly, with the help of a New York Times article about the small social network project, they brought it over $200,000 in the fundraiser. Even Mark Zuckerberg, the founder of Facebook, contributed to the cause.

Fast forward about three months, and here we are. Without much news on the project in the last several months, many in the social networking sphere likely forgot about Diaspora, however it was being worked on behind the scenes. Yesterday they announced that on September 15th, the project will be open-sourced. They were quick to point out that it is nowhere near complete, however, this is a major step in the right direction. In a note to their supporters, they wrote:

We are spending a good chunk of time concentrating on building clear, contextual sharing. That means an intuitive way for users to decide, and not notice deciding, what content goes to their coworkers and what goes to their drinking buddies. We know that’s a hard UI problem and we take it seriously.

Clearly the project has a long way to go to even consider competing with the 500 million member Facebook network, however they have begun the project and are probably further along than most people had hoped. More information on the Diaspora project can be found at:

http://www.joindiaspora.com/