Diaspora, the much-hyped open source alternative to Facebook, will release its code to the world on September 15, but promises that its creators are just getting started.
Earlier this year, Facebook was embroiled in controversy after it made significant privacy changes. Users didn't like having more of their information public, so they revolted.
During the height of the crisis, four NYU students decided to create an open source alternative to Facebook. Their goal was to raise $10,000 for their summer project, but dramatic interest helped them raise over $100,000 through donations. Even Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg donated to the project.
Since then, the Diaspora team has been mostly silent, coding away on their project. However, in a blog post earlier today, they revealed that the project is on track for release on September 15.
"We have Diaspora working, we like it, and it will be open sourced on September 15th," the Diaspora team said in its announcement.
Only the Beginning
Diaspora was originally intended to be just a summer project, but the high interest in the project has changed the team's plans. Diaspora's development schedule has been extended.
"We aren’t going to stop working after we release," Diaspora stated in its blog post. "Ilya and Raphael are taking leave from NYU, and we will continue to develop and maintain Diaspora as a long term project."
What will Diaspora look like? According to the team, it's focusing on "on building clear, contextual sharing." One of the open source social network's features will be making it easy and intuitive for users to decide what content gets added and shared to their social circles.