Facebook Alternative Raises $115K in Donations

How unhappy are people with Facebook's latest privacy infractions? So unhappy that four NYU students have raised $115,000 in 19 days for Diaspora, their non-profit alternative, even though they haven't written a single line of code yet. “That's the equivalent of a significant angel round of funding in the Internet startup world,” notes an impressed Wired.

Other alternatives are also popping up, like OneSocialWeb, a set of social networking apps you can host on any server, and Appleseed, which lets you friend users on other sites. But Diaspora has an advantage: It works with your existing Facebook account, but if it notices that the person you're communicating with is also on Diaspora, it sends the message using a peer-to-peer encrypted protocol. “This is the crucial way out of the walled garden,” says the students' adviser. (More Facebook stories.)