Will Facebook users emigrate to new, private social networking site?SOME CALL it the "anti-Facebook", others see it as the future of user- controlled online networking. But however you view it, quietly and politely, Diaspora, a groundbreaking social network is taking shape.
Joindiaspora.com secured over $200,000 (€138,442) on the crowdfunding website Kickstarter, and even the man it’s taking on, Facebook founder Mark Zuckerburg, donated an undisclosed sum to the creators, a group of NYU students. Over the past few weeks, Irish users have dipped their toes into its sparse waters testing the “alpha” stage of development.
Diaspora addresses three of Facebook’s main problems. First, it’s acutely privacy aware, with users owning all of their own content. Second, Diaspora functions around “aspects”, similar to groups or lists, so you can publish different details to different “aspects”, be they colleagues, family or friends, meaning your boss won’t get to see your holiday photos and your Mum won’t see your hungover status update.
And third, Diaspora responds to the growing anti-corporate sentiment seeping through the web. The code for Diaspora is free, so anyone with a server can host it, meaning there is no centralised ownership or control.
The future of social networking is in niches, and Diaspora should appeal to users who aspire to exist in a free and open web, devoid of the massive controlling interests that make millions in advertising revenue from personal data that users willingly forsake.
Facebook’s underlying issue is that of any rapidly expanding entity: it’s getting too big. And just like the fall of Bebo, the tastemakers and influences will (and are beginning to) emigrate and delete their accounts.
Facebook will probably be able to sustain itself on a glut of mainstream users, especially if it diversifies and evolves in the right ways. So it will be interesting to see how many people will forsake the bells and whistles of Facebook for a more worthy kind of platform – like swapping a Big Mac for bread and butter.
For now, Diaspora is almost eerily quiet but online communities don’t grow overnight. They’ve built it, now they just have to wait for the crowds to come.
Triple-barrelled wedding guests outclass Posh
FORMULATING A balanced wedding guestlist is never easy, and there should be plenty of awkward moments in the smoking area at Buckingham Palace with the news that Prince William and Kate Middleton have invited six of their exes (four for Wills, two for Kate) to their nuptials. But what’s far more interesting is what those exes and others on the guestlist are actually called.
With wedding memorabilia currently being flogged from Shanghai to Stoke Newington, there’s one key bit of tat missing, and that is The Official Royal Wedding Poshest Guestlist Names Top Trumps.
There are several requirements to make it into the Top Trumps pack. Double- and triple-barrelled names are a must, so stand up please the fantastically monikered Isabella Anstruther-Gough-Calthorpe, a former flame of the prince’s. Also scoring high on the poshometer is Davina Duckworth-Chad who was sidelined as a potential wife by Middleton.
Having a name that doesn't actually sound like a real name also gets you in, so say hello to Tiggy Pettifer and her mother Shan Legge-Bourke. Alicia Fox-Pitt and Liz Sebag-Montefiore also make the pack as they pass the requirement of sounding like bullies from Malory Towers.
Being aristocratic is also a must for gaining Top Trumps points, which should see Edward Innes-Ker, son of the 10th Duke of Roxburghe, and Lady Natasha Rufus Isaacs, daughter of the Marquess of Reading, through.
Expect the relatively boringly named invitees Guy Ritchie and Victoria Beckham to be feeling quite inadequate on the day.
