When you get assisted by a leader in the industry for an idea that is totally off track their line of work, chances are that you have a pretty good idea worth spending money on. Diaspora, the more private social network to be has received a similar assistance from Mark Zuckerberg. Facebook founder and CEO admitted that he had donated an unspecified amount of cash to this project from 4 NYU students stating that he sees his own self in them, honestly speaking that is scary, I will tell you why.
While it wont obviously hurt Facebook or even Mark to donate a few thousand dollars to such a startup, the idea they are donating for is simply against their own interest. I mean the kids want to have a social network which gives back privacy to the users, completely and not sharing it with anyone for any purpose.
Facebook on the other hand believes in the more social and open Web that exists, but given that Facebook has grown and is growing at quite a high rate. Although it has been receiving a lot of criticism from users on privacy, threats from users to quit it in masses on May 31 and to the extent of being banned in Pakistan for not doing anything about the blasphemous content against the Prophet [PBUH]. All these are essentially the reason why people are fed up with it and are ready to join anything that answers their growing concerns over privacy. But wait, that is not killing Facebook, not anytime in the future at least.
So why exactly would Mark Zuckerberg still invest in the idea? Remember I said he sees a lot of himself in the kids and that it is very scary? I was just being skeptical, this is exactly how he started Facebook, a closed network for you to connect with friends with a very secure network, but during the course of its evolution it has played upon that user trust big time. Perhaps this Diaspora project may also end up like Facebook or the many other social networks that have been found leaking user information to the Ad publishers.
[via Wired]
